I still don’t have much of a voice and added to that I now have a lovely sinus-headache and truly beautiful chesty cough. I think I’ve changed me mind – right now I can only imagine some Dr. doing research in germ warfare would be interested in me.

But all of the above doesn’t impede by Roasting abilities (though it might make me more cynical/bitter than usual). Have fun 😉

It’s been a while since I stumbled across a site that genuinely stopped me in my tracks and forced me to read it in more depth because I literally couldn’t believe my eyes. So it kind of gives me the warm fluffies to bring you Stop the ACLU. I say kind of, because the content disturbs ten kinds of hell out of me for many, many reasons. The site might be better entitled “welcome to the Dark Side of the Web”. I could list the pages that most shocked/angered/bemused me but that would (1) take far too long, (2) probably end up with me listing their entire site and (3) give them inbound links and page rank they really don’t deserve. In the spirit of West Wing, which I’m in the middle of re-watching the entire run of for about the twentieth time, I ask you the following – when did being a liberal become such a bad thing?

I sound off with monotonous regularity about the US and the assorted bizarre things that are done in the name of mythic “National Security” so it’s only fair I say something when my own country is going gaga. At Stansted Airport, you have to leave a fingerprint when hiring a car. The line that worries me most is “The police will never see these thumbprints unless a crime is committed”. But when a crime *is* committed I don’t want the police running my fingerprint through their database – I don’t want to be ON that database in the first place! It’s a sad day when I realise I’d know more about my rights if I was American rather than British, but I’m pretty certain we have something analogous to the “not be asked to turn over evidence against ourselves that could, in the future, be used to incriminate us” or some such wording. Illegal search, I say! Illegal search!

Time for something a bit more positive – Baen Books are providing their e-books to disabled readers free of charge.

There’s really no way I can make the following link sound either sexy or interesting, so I’m not even going to try. I just learnt about a new HTML element (new to me, not new-new) and thought I would share in case other people hadn’t heard of it either: Definition Lists for use when you want to, well, list definitions! If you are already marching to the drum of semantic markup etc., then this is for you. If you’re not, go read about semantic markup somewhere and then be happy 😀

Moose really is earning her title of Head Minion. Rarely a day goes by without some piece of web-arcarna landing in my inbox – the latest being how to prank a telemarketer. (Warning – it should autoplay and is on a loop).

Penguin Speakers. For the iPod. I really don’t have to say anything else do I? (Other than subtly point out that Christmas is just around the corner… 😉 )

Apparently the Web is to blame for the current crisis in politics. I think it might have more to do with the current crop of politicians we have, but that’s just little cynical old me. The Internet has certainly made it easier for the dissatisfied to have a voice. Thinking about it, none of the three parties really have a platform I totally agree with or that is applicable to me and my peer group – er, how do you go about creating a new party?

For those who say they are happy with the way personal data is stored and used by our Government, I say look at how easy it was to crack the fancy-pants new biometric passports. The Home Office is reported to have commented “What use would my biometric image be to you?” I ask, so why do you want it in the first place?

Most people are now aware that penguins form lasting relationships with penguins of the same sex and even raise little baby penguins. They may be evil, but clearly they are a very progressive species. Anyway, someone wrote a children’s book about this phenomena, in particular about two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo that adopted an egg/chick (Tango). And now certain people in Illinois want the book banned. They are PENGUINS for jimminy-cricket’s sake! *gives up* There just aren’t the words.

And to end with two movie trailers that caught my eye:
Zodiac – I can pretty much already guess who the bad guy is going to be (the one named actor who doesn’t appear in the trailer…) but it still looks good. Well, it’s got Jake Gyllen-Whosit and Robert Downey Jr. in it, so it’s bound to look good 😉
Evan Almighty – I enjoyed Bruce Almighty. Morgan Freeman is an inspired choice as God. The trail did amuse me, but probably only “rent from the Library” amused, not “pay through the nose for the cinema” amused.

Before you all go scratching your brain for the provenance of the title quote (does anyone still do that out of curiosity?) it’s a 24 carat illyna/MiniStar/Cas/assorted-other-collective-members gem from last night. There was another even better totally random quote inspired by Family Fortunes and the Osmonds, but alas no one can remember it 🙁

Also, this week’s Roast contains things from the past fortnight due to last week’s jaunting. Despite this it’s really rather short – either my cynical/humour receptors are set to ‘hard to impress’ or it’s been a slow couple of weeks. Ah well, enjoy anyway. If anyone has anything else they’ve spotted lately that they want to share, comments are open as always 🙂

Um, can I go back to school please?

Blogging must be good, Tim Berners-Lee says so.

Fast condoms on sale in South Africa. I don’t really need to add anything to that headline now, do I?

Everyone, including peppers, looks better when they smile. What I want to know is, was it tasty?

Ever had a premonition? Now, I’m in a dilemma with this movie. Normally I am totally oblivious when it comes to thrillers/murder-mysteries/stories-with-a-twist, but lately I’ve been getting scarily perceptive. I got the twist in The Prestige really rather quickly, so spent the majority of the movie waiting for the obvious. Not that I didn’t enjoy the movie, (lots of Hugh Jackman, yummy), but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have. And with Premonition I already have an inkling as to the twist/outcome… Maybe if it’s a slow week at the cinema.

Turns out, pasties are from Devon… *runs and hides from illyna*

First off my heart felt apologies to anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to get hold of me the last two/three weeks. I’ve been even worse than normal due to a larger-than-usual workload. Any one who managed to get even one email/phone call/text out of me is a lucky sod indeed. All the rest of you – the good news is that the main time-eater ends on Wednesday, then I’m pootling back to the Homestead that weekend to recharge my batteries, and expect to be back to my usual effervescent self from the 6th of November.

Till then, please remember – it’s my sheer scattiness and email-dodging skills that make you all love me so much, right? 😉

From what I’ve seen of Canada in person and on the TV, I think it’s a lovely place. Different enough to be, well, different, but with enough of a European feel to make it feel like ‘home’ at the same time. I never really thought of Montreal as a place to visit till lately, but it looks nice.

One of my minions has some news: JB got married! Congratulations and bon chance JB 🙂

Apparently Harrison Ford feels fit enough to play Indiana Jones in the fourth movie. Ok, so he’s well preserved I’ll give him that. It’s just that they’re thinking of bringing Sean Connery back as Indy’s father. I love the first three movies with all my heart and I think that Sean Connery was an inspired choice for Papa Indy, but seriously – the age gap was never very convincing in the first films. Now it is just going to be unbelievable. *grumble* *mutter about silly sequels ruining favourite movies* *grumble*

I’ll still go and see it when (if) it finally gets released though 😀

I was tidying up my inbox the other day and came across this little gem that kept us amused one day when we really didn’t want to make bus passes (oh, the joyous jobs I held as a temp). Go on, I challenge you all to draw a pig.

We all know I have trouble with brevity, so I admire those who can put across their meaning with the minimum of wordage. WIRED magazine asked sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers to take a shot at writing six word stories. These are the results. My favourite is Margaret Atwood’s “Longed for him. Got him. Shit.“.

I was going to include a six word story of my own on this post, but I drew a blank. Can you think of any?

We all fell in love with Moo cards when the first came out – now they’ve launched Skype MiniCards. Not sure if they’ve got any left, but they were dishing out free batches of ten again…

Well that’s the USA out as a holiday destination for me.

See, I’m not the only one who’s pants at corresponding. Writing, any writing, takes time and mental energy. I don’t like to dash emails off in a hurry, preferring instead to think things through – when you get an email from me it’s because I’ve taken the time to make sure it says what I really want it to say (well, a girl can try). Yes the delivery of an email might be more-or-less instantaneous, but that doesn’t mean you have to be careless with what you say.

That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

And to finish with the Sunday Funny: you have to ask yourself, geese (and penguins) may be evil, but what about the swans?

EDIT:
I was going to include the trailer for the Dixxy Chicks documentary “Shut Up And Sing” in the Roast, but Apple is saying ‘file not found’. The best I can do is link you to the main Weinstein Company page and suggest you watch it there. Sorry it has to be Flash.

I do hope you enjoy this week’s Roast – I enjoyed writing it, though I have to wonder why the blogging gods hate me so much. I have insane amounts of other things to do this weekend, so they conspire to give me oodles of roastable material. In the weeks when I am bored out my tiny little mind I get like three articles to write about. This week? Safari nearly collapses under the load of tabs I have open.

Clearly I haven’t been talking enough about penguins lately and they are punishing me.

Read and comment at your leisure. I am off to wrestle another couple of thousand lines of html. Shoot me. Now.

Run all you like… you cannot escape the T-Rex of Love!!

Ever mindful of my desire to leave the country and suspiciously eager to help, Moose used her arcane skills and found out that Taranaki was actively looking for people – they even had a job fair in Southampton! (which I found out about too late to go to 🙁 ) One job description that made me laugh was that of Mind Motivation Workshop Assistant. I can just see that conversation: “for yes, I am emigrating to New Zealand, to become a Mind Motivation Workshop Assistant”.

I don’t carry my laptop around with me any more but if I did, I would so love one of these cases! Fluffier and cuter by far than my current grey wetsuit material sleeve.

I know I’m a clutz, but at least I never stuck my elbow through a Picasso. Dingbat!

Longleat safari park (good place to visit btw) has a prosthetic wheel. Ah, the miracles of modern veterinary medicine. I wonder if the other tortoises bully her or try to steal her hub-cap whilst she’s sleeping?

(And as an aside, has anyone else noticed how tabloid-y the BBC News headlines are getting?)

Women of the future will have perfect breasts. Apparently. The whole study reads to me like the guy’s read too much Asimov (Caves of Steel, Robots of Dawn etc) and Wells. But perhaps he’s a genuine scientist. Doing an honest an unbiased study for Bravo. (If you can’t sense the sarcasm oozing from my keyboard then I’m clearly not as good a writer as I’d thought).

Pooey. I am never back home when the interesting things happen – my favourite author (Iain Banks) was at the Wells Festival of Literature recently. To be honest I wasn’t even aware Wells HAD a literature festival – with a truly horrendous website.

If you were ever looking at a way to get the crap kicked out of your child and to scar them for life, look no further. And yes, pun intended.

Another film that’s tickled my fancy this week – The Good German

Being the remarkably organized person that I am, one summer back when I was 14 or 15 I decided to list all the books I owned on a spreadsheet. Always one to do the job properly, I listed ISBNs as well. Now this spreadsheet has grown with me and now catalogues most of the 500+ books I own and that aren’t squirreled away in the loft somewhere. I say most, because I’ve been lax about updating it of late. I’ve tried other book cataloguing software – Delicious Library and Bookpedia for two – but the free versions of these limit the number you can import and I’m not anal enough to spend money on the software. I recently discovered LibraryThing however and was VERY impressed with their import feature – just select the spreadsheet and press upload. It finds the ISBN’s for itself, goes hunting Amazon and other places for itself, and then presents it all too you. Even with Delicious Library I had to tweak the spreadsheet slightly before I could import. Have a look at my books (and no sniggering, at least not in public). It says you can only import 200 books on the free version, but somehow it’s listed all that were on the spreadsheet. Sweet 😀

I ordered some more Moo Cards the other day (my 10 free excited me) and I *was* going to use them as business card type thingies, then I saw this idea of making Moo-gnets. Not sure our fridge has enough room left on it what with the alphabet letters and so on, but ooooooh! This is a great idea!

And lastly, don’t forget, 9rules round 5 is here on the 25th – if you’re wondering what membership might get you, David Seah has explained it all so I don’t have to. It really is all about the people.

Slightly later than planned (my bad – blame trashy chick lit), I bring you something to wile away what is left of a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I was always concerned by jelly (jell-o) as a kid, but that was because of my allergies to the colourings and flavourings – at least I never mistook it for toxic waste.

Just when the Crazy Canalman is looking forward to a retirement cruising round the waterways of Great Britain, it looks like they are going to be closing some of them. Timing never was a family strong point.

Thank you everyone who sponsored me for this years Race for Life – here’s what you were supporting.

Despite every character I’ve ever RP’d ending up as a barmaid in some dive or another, I’ve never actually worked in a bar (though I’ve flirted wiht the idea a time or two – getting thrown out of the last establishment I was tempted to work for has kinda dampened my enthusiasm) but even after one night the smoke gets to me – so it’s good that a recent study has shown that since the smoking ban in Scotland, the health of bar staff has drastically improved. Bring on the ban in Britain England (thank you for pointing that out Moose)! It would be so nice to come home from a night out and NOT have to shower the smoke smell out of my hair before I stumble into bed. Not to mention not inhaling enough carcinogens and tar on a night out to pave New York.

In yet another stunning blow to civil liberties, scientists are suggesting tagging air passengers in order to combat terrorism. If you will excuse me I’m off to live as a hermit on some remote Scottish isle. At least there I’ll only be at risk from terrorist sheep and I think I like those odds.

I’ve been meaning to link to the MangoFalls Digital Project for some time, but I just kept forgetting. The situation is now remedied. I love the idea of this project – old slides and images are scanned and a new one presented daily. Some beautiful, quirky and down right amazing pictures come to light. Each one has a story that is just begging to be told. In fact, if you are a writer stuck for inspiration, you could do worse! (There is an RSS feed because I’ve subscribed to it, but it is a little buried. In fact, your best bet is to hop on over to 9rules photography community and nab the feed from there. It’s worth the investigatory work).

I’ve loved Mata since I first saw Mittens and Snowdrop way back… Certain people can still be brought to helpless giggles by well placed “I can smell your brains” comments. Anyway, he has a new strip – Trouble Down the Pit. It’s a classic story – angel meets devil, angel needs a place to live, fun, frolicks, and Cyber Ninga’s. Because why not? (Does contain religious imagery, sarcasm, and general light satire. Don’t click if you are easily offended – or have no sense of humour, though if that is the case what are you doing still reading my blog! – or if you do click, don’t come back at me with pointy sticks. Please?)

I’ve never been a fan of David Blunkett (then show me politician I AM a fan of these days) but I will admit his diaries make interesting reading.

I haven’t linked to, or talked about, movies in a while. That’s partly because this summers movies have sucked (apart from The Departed, that was good. Oh, and Children of Men, and The Queen, and The Assassination of a President) and partly because I got out of the habit of watching movie trailers. Well, I got back into the habit in a big way yesterday and here are a few that caught my eye (apologies for if I am out of date on any of these):

• Eragon – what is it with Jeremy Irons and fantasy? Didn’t D&D put him off? Either way, this looks good, if only for the chance to see John Malkovic chew the scenery as the supreme bad guy. He does do such a good bad guy.
• The Good Shepherd – I’m not sure what it is with me and spy’s, but it’s something that fascinates me. I could never do the job – for starters I abhor violence – but still I’m hooked on the genre. I blame my brother and a child hood of making me watch Bond movies.
• Hollywoodland – Adrien Brody and Ben Affleck among others? This just looks totally delicious.
• Freedom Writers – this might be one of those times when I’ve been suckered by a good track on the trail. Very Dangerous Minds but who DOESN’T like a nice stirring story of kids overcoming their backgrounds? And by writing? Grumpy sods 😛
• My First Wedding – there are no excuses but this trail did genuinely make me laugh. And snigger. So every now and then a girl needs not to think at the movies! From the look on Moose’s face when I mentioned it this one might be a rental however.
• Edmond – from the trail I could be watching large chunks of this from behind my hands (lots of icky violence) but William H. Macey going psycho? That’s gonna be good cinema.
• The History Boys – and lastly, The History Boys has been getting a lot of press attention over here. It’s done well at the various festivals. And it has a good cast. I’m looking forward to it.

And to finish, all good things come to those who wait…

This weeks title bears no real relevance to the Roast at all, I just liked it and wanted to use it. It appeals to my sense of the absurd (and if you’re wondering, yes it is a quote from our dumb cousins across the pond) – come on, terrorists are using mice now? Robot mice? What are they going to do, eat all the cheese?

Anyway, enough American mocking because, fun though it is, for some reason large numbers of my readership normally fail to see the funny and get all annoyed at me. I don’t want hate mail – it’s no fun 🙁

Yes, Cas is in a silly mood today. And talking about herself in the third person which is never a good sign…

Curly Durly always made some pretty groovy cakes for birthdays when we were growing up – my favourites were the tipper truck where the truck bed actually tipped and cascaded sweets all over the table and this beautiful piano cake – but even she never made something as impressive as this Discworld wedding cake. The Discworld doesn’t scream matrimony to me as much as the traditional white with two figurines on top, but still – good cake.

Lelia is one hell of a lot braver than I am. I saw MySpace and ran away in screaming terror. She saw MySpace and like any good anthropologist would, decided it needed investigation – read her field notes.

How to survive a plane crash. Doesn’t really need much more introduction, does it?

There is now a penguin robot in existence. Do I have to spell out how freeking happy this makes me? 😀

I’ve played with the idea of creating an online shop a time or three (what’s stopped me is that I have nothing really to sell – the jewelry, notebooks and quilts I make, I make on a commission/request basis) and the instructions for Shopify and PayPal integration always scared the crap out of me. These instructions to mod WordPress into a shop seem (slightly) less scary and have the benefit of using WordPress which we all know and love.

See, it’s not just my American readers who don’t like my US-bashing, it upsets the Federal government as well!

I like science when it proves something I already believes: scientists have shown that black tea really does calm you down. I’d always thought it was the combination of the act of taking a break, making the tea, and holding the warm mug, as well as what was in the mug in the first place. Nice to know that millions of British people haven’t been party to a mass generational cultural disillusionment.

In the latest reported case of politician foot-in-mouth syndrome, Jack Straw announced Muslim women should not wear veils which cover the face.
…
…
Yes. I think you can work out the response from there on your own, don’t you?

Not just a good minion, but a talented photographer as well. What I want to know is how you got that cat in there in the first place Jay! Is it a habitual haunt, or did you just block it in with books?

Which five bloggers would you love to meet?
A question impossible to answer without offending the people I didn’t mention. Suffice it to say, if you comment on the blog I’d love to meet you. I’m not going to list you all because you know who you are. Plus I know I will forget people, not because I don’t love you, but because, well, I have the memory retention of a brain injured goldfish.

Because it illustrates why I am actually happy in my new job and enthused about the work I am doing: five tales of the trouble former prisoners have on leaving prison. Hopefully, the new team that has been set up (and which I work for) is going to be addressing just these sort of problems.

Apparently I’ve stolen Moose’s blogging mojo. Entirely unintentional, I assure you! I’m not really sure what I can do to remedy the situation either – I can hardly be blamed for being so wonderful now, can I? I considered taking a break from blogging, then realised that you can probably take altruism too far. I refuse to feel guilty however, refuse I say!
And she also assures me in no uncertain terms that her site is *not* pink, it’s a nice lavender colour. It looks pink on my screen…

And on that note I shall finish and run away to buy a new VCR before Moose comes chasing after me with an unripe banana. Have a lovely Sunday everyone 🙂

Firstly, if you haven’t already noticed, Bright Meadow has gone pink for October. The “Oh good god what have you done?!” comments issuing from Moose when she got greeted by the pink this morning made it all worthwhile. In answer to her plaintive question of “but why does it have to be SO pink?” I answer that if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. In for a penny, in for a pound. And all other applicable cliches. I loathe pink in all it’s forms (unless it is ironic pink, a concept that not everyone understands) so when I made the decision to go Pink for October I knew I would have to go so far over the top as to come back on it from the other side. I am actually glorying in the sheer Barbie-ness of it.

As mentioned on the previous post, there are 7 changes, some major, some minor, that have been made to the site to ‘pinkify’ it. If you can spot all seven Minionhood awaits 🙂

And now, back the regularly scheduled programming.

The Pew Internet and American Life project recently released part 2 of their ‘Future of the Internet’ report. Fred over at ClaimID wrote a very interesting piece on whether transparency will make the world a better place?. Whilst I’ve not had the time, or I must admit inclination, to give either the report or Fred’s article the full attention they deserve, there are some VERY interesting and startling findings in there. A must-read for anyone who claims an interest in the future of the Internet.

Clive Owen’s latest film Children of Men tops the UK box office. This doesn’t surprise me as it is a very solid film. I saw it last weekend and throughout it is pitch-perfect. The disillusionment, terror, and casual violence of a world without children is beautifully portrayed. I’ve never read the PD James book the film is based on (Moose assures me the book is also very good, but differs widely from the film) but the film stands perfectly well as a piece of wonderful cinema. Disquieting to watch because you can all to easily see society going that way, even without the loss of children, and with some very strong performances – Michael Cain is a joy to watch as always. Honestly, go see the film. A very firm four penguin film.

One word sprang to mind when reading of Josh’s plans to sail a viking boat on the Ohio – why? Followed by a secondary thought that this boy is insane. Which was followed by “good, that’s perfect behaviour for one of my Minions” 😀

Apparently, finger length shows if you will be sporty or not. Now, my 2d measurement is approx. 8cm, whilst my 4d measurement is approx. 9cm. and I *SUCK* at running. I can put on a fair burst of speed when I have to (running for the bus etc.) but I am, at best, a short-distance sprinter. And not a fast one at that! I have no/very little endurance and even if I was at the peak of physical fitness, I would still be a bad runner – women with decent sized breasts are NOT, I repeat NOT built for movement at speed. Or bouncing activities. Trust me on this. So I feel that I singlehandedly disprove this theory, but then I’m not a scientist, so what do I know?

I’m not linking to the following story for the content, rather for the headline. In my mind you don’t ‘mull’ nuclear bombs. The word ‘mull’ just seems too… fluffy… for weapons of mass destruction. But that’s me.

It’s been hard, nay impossible, to find American Long-grain rice in the supermarkets here for the past month or so. I had my suspicions this was because of a GM incident I’d heard about recently. I do so like it when I’m proven right.

Now before we go any further I must stress I am not conservative a never will be. Most of their political platform sends chills into my heart and I disagree with them on pretty much every issue. At the same time, I’m curious about WebCameron (don’t you just love that little ‘beta’ tag in the top right? How very Web 2.0 now excuse me whilst I go make an offering to the web gods in apology for using the term ‘web 2.0’ on this site) which is David Cameron’s video blog. I tried to access it most of the day yesterday but it was down because of a link on the BBC News site – not a good start there. Launching a video blog you hope will raise your profile and… you’re not prepared for the demand.

Anyway, enough with the snark. I can access it today (servers have obviously been frantically bullied into behaving) and, I must admit it, I’m impressed. It looks unoffensive. It works on the Mac. It bends over backwards NOT to look like any other government site. I’m… damn it! There’s nothing I can complain about!

Hang on, yes there is. No RSS. Naughty – you expect me to manually check in with the site to see if there has been a new episode uploaded? Oh, how very old school.

Other than that though, there is a distinct lack of grump material. I am genuinely impressed that the Conservatives are making this effort to communicate directly with people. I like that they have an ‘open blog’ where, if you register, you can join in the discussion. I’m not sure I want to register (do I *want* the Conservatives to have me email address and details?) but that’s my personal decision. Yes, it smacks a little bit of jumping on the ‘blog’ bandwagon, but why not? You use whatever you can to gain an advantage, and where are the Lib Dem’s or New Labour?

My recommendations – get RSS feeds implemented.
My reservations/questions – how ‘open’ is the Open Blog? Do they screen posts before they are posted? What level of interaction will there be between commentors and David/other Conservative party members?
Why I probably won’t be watching WebCameron on a regular basis – my deep and abiding distrust and dislike of the Tories. I’ve got a feeling a few candid camera shots of David Cameron doing the washing up isn’t going to make me change my mind.

Kudos for trying though 🙂

I do take umbrage at David Cameron’s quote in the middle of this article though where he says “a young person would no more think of going to a public meeting than boiling an egg“. I LIKE boiled eggs. I regularly have them for brunch. Moose had boiled eggs for breakfast only this morning. On top of that, I *work* in local government and I’m only 24, so 😛 you Mr Cameron.

I spotted this recipe for Mooncakes and, whilst I’ve never had a proper Mooncake in my life, I want to try them. Probably won’t be able to get half of the necessary ingredients in this country, but they look intriguing if nothing else.

And lastly for this Sunday Roast, because my finger feels like it is about to burst open at the seams and start gushing blood all over my keyboard (ick) I am saddened to find out that Orbit gum will not get you into heaven. What about other sorts of gum? And how do they know? And why the need for the small print?! I mean, it’s not like you’re gonna be able to come back and say “well actually, I ended up in hell so I’m gonna sue…” I mean, you’d be dead, and if it’s one thing the dead are known for it’s not suing people.

That’s it for today folks. Go, have fun, and remember – breasts are for life, not just for Christmas: be aware.