Do you ever have those books that you read as a kid and vaguely remember the plot of, but can’t for the life of you remember what it was called? Well, the Brainy Snail and myself had a joint one back in Liverpool. The description went something as follows:

There’s this boy, he goes to live with this old woman (I think) in a this massive, tumbledown house somewhere in the country. He has adventures with ghosts…

Not exactly something you can type into Google, right?
Well, two years later, we finally have the answer thanks to a random conversation at an archaeology conference (I’d like to bet that the actual conversation took place down the pub. That’s how these conferences really work in my experience).
Courtesy of Random Cambridge Archaeologist and the Brainy Snail, I bring you “The Children of Green Knowe” by L. M. Boston.
Now all that remains is for me to smile sweetly at Curly Durly and get her to rummage through the boxes of books in the Homestead attic to find my old copy. It would be easier just to order it from Amazon, but much less fun 😉

Any one else got any books they vaguely remember? Let’s see if we can leverage the wonderful power of the Internet to find them for us. I also have this film that’s been bugging me for years now: 12(ish) year old boy finds out there really are monsters living under the bed – well, the entrance to their world is under the bed. Can’t remember if the monsters were evil or good (though I am leaning toward good in a naughty kind of way). That’s it. Oh, and this movie has so scarred me so badly that to this day I can’t fall asleep if my hand is dangling over the side of the bed.

Because it hurts like crap but is so easy to prevent, some pointers on how to avoid RSI. Listen to what this woman has to say. You will be saving yourself a LOT of pain and anguish in the long run.

I’m starting to get itchy feet regarding Bright Meadow’s design – I haven’t tweaked it in a while, and I know it isn’t as good as it could be. It’s rather timely, therefore, that Paul is still doing his Customizing K2 series. Even if you don’t have WordPress, this particular post has some good pointers regarding extraneous javascripts and loading things from external servers.

I missed the actual announcement, but it doesn’t surprise me to hear that the FDA denies that medical marijuana helps patients. Whilst I am against recreational drug use, I have seen first hand the relief marijuana gave people dying from cancer when prescription drugs were failing them. I’m with danah on this one – it’s time it was made legal for medicinal purposes.

Until Friday, I wasn’t even aware that the UK didn’t have its own astronauts. Now I know, I think it is silly. We should have astronauts, if only so I can live out my dream of becoming a Xenoarchaeologist! (Yes, I read too much sci-fi).

Genetics and stress are found linked to CFS – see, even more evidence supporting the “we’re not making it up, we really are sick” camp.

Sumeet has this great meme: 50 Greatest Book to Film Adaptations. Get the list, see how many of the books and/or films you’ve read/watched.
Here’s mine:
[b] – Read the book
[m] – Seen the movie
[bm] – Both

1. [b] 1984
2. [b] Alice in Wonderland
3. American Psycho
4. [m] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. [b] Catch 22
7. [bm] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. [b] The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [bm] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [bm] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. Empire of the Sun
16. [bm] The English Patient
17. [m] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [m] Get Shorty
20. [m] The Godfather
21. [m] Goldfinger
22. [m] Goodfellas
23. [b] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [bm] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [m] Jaws
26. [bm] The Jungle Book
27. [bm] A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. LA Confidential
29. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. Lolita
31. [b] Lord of the Flies
32. [bm] The Maltese Falcon
33. [bm] Oliver Twist
34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. The Outsiders
37. [bm] Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. [bm] The Railway Children
40. [bm] Rebecca
41. [bm] The Remains of the Day
42. [bm] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. [m] Sin City
44. [b] The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [m] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. [b] Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. [b] Through a Glass Darkly
48. [bm] To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [m] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. [b] Watership Down

And for the CC, a wireless Guitar Hero controller.

As I discovered on the flight to Toronto. All “Eagles” tracks on the beloved iPod are now classed as “Beach Boys” tracks. Makes for one very odd playlist, let me tell you!

Anyway, a teeny tiny Roast this week. I blame jet lag and my currently jaded outlook on life. It’s taking a lot to impress and/or amuse me at the moment and, as those are the criteria that must be met to gain entry into the Roast, it’s understandable only a few things make it through. Enjoy anyways 🙂

ProBlogger has a great piece on whether RSS is the downfall of building relationships on blogs? Personally, I’d rather have the option of RSS than not have the option – I just don’t have the time to check in manually on each and every blog/site I read. At the same time, I do know that reading in the RSS reader makes me even less likely to comment, so perhaps there’s a point to the argument. How about you lot – do the pros of RSS outweigh the cons? Do you even use RSS? Does using RSS make you less likely to comment? Minimize the relationship you have with a site? What does it take to make you interact? (I know there’s at least 15 of you out there who subscribe to the RSS feed, so now is the time to make yourself heard, and I am genuinely curious).

Apparently, people using search engines stop looking at the third page of results. Yeah, this feels true, unless I am looking really hard for something. I’m teaching Curly Durly how to use the Internet at the moment, and I doubt she’s even aware of the existence of a second page of results, let alone a third, or fourth, page.

A little warning for all you Windows freaks fans who are champing at the bit to get Vista – make sure your new pc can actually cope with it. Vista is going to need a high-spec machine. From all accounts, a very high-spec machine.

And to round off the week, something from the delectable danah all about the trials and tribulations of being notable on Wikipedia. It sure is a screwed up universe when something Bill O’Reilly says is taken as more true than something the person them self says.

Todays Roast is late for one simple reason that can be explained in one short sentence: It is sunday. I am not ashamed to admit I slept late, or that I then stayed in bed till midday reading. It’s been a hard week, I am cream crackered, and I need as much beauty sleep as possible before Thursday because I’d hate to fly 3000 odd miles and have the Cute Canadian take one look at me and go “Ug! What the frell did I ever see in her?!” (I like to think an unlikely scenario, but it could happen).

Good things, however, come to those who wait. Voila! Happy eating 🙂

I’ve been lax in commenting over at Successful Blog lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been avidly reading. Liz has a wonderful (when aren’t they?) piece on 10 reasons to get jazzed about writing. Reasons three and eight are the ones that speak most to me. I rarely (if ever) sound coherent or intelligent in spoken dialogue. A combination of nerves, shyness, and my brain working faster than I can get the words out is probably to blame. Writing gives me space to put my ideas down in coherent form. Whenever I face a tricky situation – be it personal, work, whatever – I invariably find myself writing something down. The end result may have nothing to do to with what I was originally pondering, but the very process of writing helps clarify things for me. Why do you write?

I hummed and haaaed over including this in the ‘Roast as it is more for me and my research/interests, but in the end it made it through if only because this way I won’t be able to delete the bookmark! (Already misplaced it twice *blush*) Stowe is doing a webcast on what web 2.0 means to you and (he promises) he’ll put up the slides for us poor people unable to gallivant around the globe going to conferences and the like. Ahh, bless the Interweb. Soon I’ll never even have to leave the house 🙂

This week is a “how/why do you write/blog?” kind of week, I can tell. Performancing tells us that we need to tell a good story when we blog. That’s certainly how I like to do things, and most of the blogs/sites I enjoy reading most also fall into this format, so I’d agree.

Dewayne has a link to a model of Serenity made from paper. When I saw this mid-week, it was VERY impressive, and made my crafting fingers tingle. Sadly, the site was down when I checked today. I’m keeping the link though on the off-chance it comes back up.

BBC has a piece on what makes a good book? Expect a longer blog-post soonish giving you my choices for my top books – wouldn’t be surprised if Cryptonomicon and Neuromancer didn’t make it onto my list though 😀 Any books out there that changed your life?

Improbulus has something on creative commons licences being upheld in court. I’ve had a CC licence on most of my stuff more or less since I started, but I was always rather dubious as to their enforceability in the real (legal) world, so this is good news indeed!

Ben Metcalfe has a great and well-reasoned response to the MySpace essay by Danah Boyd I pointed out to you last week.

It was a sad day when the Blue Peter badge scheme was suspended. I always wanted one of these badges when I was growing up (hell, I still do want one!) but I would never stoop to getting one off eBay. The shame.

I like my shiny jewelry, but I have such quantities of it that, not surprisingly, some bits don’t get worn for a while. They then start to look a bit dull and no longer so shiny. The last time everything was looking sparkling was when I was doing conservation work on the collections up in Liverpool – they had a nice, large, ultrasonic bath and no one minded if the odd ring, necklace, or earring found it’s way into the cycle. So I was very excited when I saw this home version of the ultrasonic bath. Then I saw it needed chemicals to work and changed my mind. Still, if anyone could point me in the direction of a small, inexpensive, ultrasonic bath that DOESN’T require ammonia etc, I would appreciate it.

Performancing are calling for authors. I am registered there so technically I could also blog there… Something though, is stopping me, mainly (I must be frank) the thought of such a large audience scares the shit out of me. Also, what would I say? Still, if you feel you have something to say, but no where to say it, go and register with Performancing. They are nice people 🙂

Of all the April Fool’s pranks that filled the web yesterday, two tickled my fancy:
Google Romance (read the FAQ on contextual dating…)
Flickr being overrun with cats. Lots and lots of cats.
Sidenote: I hate April Fool’s day and normally hide away in the flat not speaking to anyone on the off chance they’ll try to prank me. I am NOT a fan of practical jokes – too many memories of being the butt of such jokes at school I guess, or an overactive empathy gland or something.

A little while back (in this Sunday Roast) I mentioned Antarctic bloggers, one of who was Phil Jacobsen. I’m gonna big him up again, because whenever he posts, he makes me laugh and then think. I’ve tried to email him twice but got bounced both times, so I’m going to have to resort to giving him the wild applause he deserves on this blog instead.
:clap_tb: :clap_tb:

Annnnnnnd… That’s it. I’m off to do the laundry and clean the flat. Enjoy 🙂

So not only is this week’s Roast very small, it is actually being written on Friday night and set to publish itself on Sunday morning. All being well, the Brainy Snail will have something to read with her morning coffee (I got told off for the posting later and later each week). The way my week is going however, chances are you won’t be reading this till I come back on Sunday evening and beat seven kinds of hell out of my server.

So, whenever you are reading this, enjoy 🙂

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that he is not very comfortable with the teaching of creationism in schools. Finally! Someone making sense on the debate. And it is a leader of the Church of England! You could have knocked me down with a feather.^* I did have a link to the NYT coverage of this story as well (ah, bless the Americans. So delightfully mixed up), but I lost it. That can be your homework 😀
*Trying hard not to let own personal beef with the C of E flavour the post. Clearly failing. Sorry. Will try harder.

The BBC have a worry report about the severe misdiagnosis of angina in women.

I haven’t linked to Danah in a while, so it makes me happy to bring you her wonderful views on MySpace vs. Friendster. I know I’m not actively researching this stuff anymore, but it still interests me. Read, inwardly digest, and discuss.

Whilst I’m not a problogger (heaven forbid, it would take all the fun out of it!), I have been a bit narked at seeing some of my content republished on other blogs. Quite why anyone would want to republish my content is a topic for another day. Darren over at ProBlogger has kicked off a discussion about just this – Should sites republish a blog’s content? (Not surprisingly, the weight of opinion currently rests firmly in the “it’s my content so why should they make money out of it?” campsite).

I am renowned the world over as the universes’ worst morning person. Ever. I’ve been told that I am “adorable” when I just wake up, but the CC is a strange boy, so he doesn’t really count. Everyone else agrees on one thing – if you see me before my morning cup of Assam, run in the opposite direction. Fast. Certainly don’t make eye contact.
So when I stumbled across Steve’s tips on how to become an early riser, I was intrigued. I already (more or less) follow this plan – go to bed when tired, wake up same time each day, get straight out of bed. Apart from weekends. I like to sleep like the dead on weekends. Perhaps that is where I am going wrong?… *ponders* Somehow, the desire to be a cheerful person when the clock still reads single digits is just not strong enough to overcome the desire to stay snuggled under the covers for as long as humanly possible. I present this article to you not as a “I will be doing this” thing, but as a “I know I should be doing this, but I won’t, but I find the idea a worthy one, so perhaps one of you is a stronger person than I am” thing.

The Odyssey continues. Josh’s attempt to break free of the tyranny of RSS that is. Going through the same thing myself (more or less) at the moment, I am deeply interested in how Josh is going about things. I’m still at the “I know I have too many feeds but can’t bring myself to delete anything” stage. It’s gonna be a while before I get past the denial I think.

That’s it. All done.
Where am I this weekend that I have to play around with advance publishing? I’m back at the homestead with Curly Durly, being nice to her on Mother’s Day, and starting to clear through the 20 odd years of crap that have accumulated in my room and the loft in preparation for house-moving. Ugh. Hope you had a great weekend without me!

Which would you rather have, a comment, or a trackback? Personally, I’d rather have comments over trackbacks, but that is because of the type of site Bright Meadow is. Really, I should have both. I just can’t be bothered to get down and dirty with the css at the moment.

Apparently, a hole in the heart is linked to migraine. Now, surely, any hole in your heart is a bad thing? (Other than the four ones you are meant to have of course).

The BBC has a report how different genders have different interests in science. Not surprisingly, men prefer blowing things up, whilst women are more interested in the biology of things. Well, that’s what the study suggests, and fair enough. It’s the fact people are honestly suggesting that lessons should be tailored to the sexes. I mean, come on! I enjoyed blowing things up as much as my brother did when we were growing up. And I enjoyed doing physics A-Level, perhaps more than my chemistry one. Grrrr. Ok, so I was never what you would describe as a normal girl, but still – if you are going to split lessons with regards gender, how are you going to cope with ones like me who don’t fit in? Or ones that are interested in everything, both the ‘boy’ stuff and the ‘girl’ stuff? Wrong, wrong I tell you. My spidy-senses are tingling.

I knew there was a reason I was saving all those AOL cds…

This recipe for chicken and coconut curry looks seriously tasty. Prawns work well in this instead of chicken I’ve discovered.

So it could be considered bad form to Roast one of my own posts, but I don’t want people to miss two wondrous recipes for cheesecakes.

Experts are urging more studies into how iPod headphones could cause hearing loss. Is it just me who thinks this isn’t a new story? I mean, from the very first time I ever got a walkman when I was about three (lots of long car trips, they were the only things that kept me and my brother from killing each other) I was told not to play it too loud. If Mum could hear it in the front seat, it was WAY too loud. I even remember all my walkmen having volume limiters on them. Not a new problem. Silly people.

What wine are you? Moose found this Little Penguin wine and passed the link on to me. I am sure you can guess why. I’m a

“Pinot Noir: Smooth and elegant, James Bond and La Femme Nakita could take lessons from you. However, that quick wit of yours masks a sensitive nature that empathizes with other’s needs and always offers a helping hand. And just like the Little Penguin Pinot Noir, that only makes you that much more enjoyable to have around.”

One more cheesecake recipe, this time for Three-Cheese Cheesecake. Yes, at some point I will be trying out all these recipes and letting you know which is best 😀

Ishbadiddle has a piece on what kids should read, as opposed to what is popular. I love Ben Okri’s list, especially the “read the books your parents hate, read the books your parents love” points. I always thank my father for refusing to buy me the Famous Five books when I was younger. It meant I had to save up my meager pocket money to buy every single one. I appreciated them all the more because I had brought them. It started as an act of rebellion, but by book 6 I was buying them because I genuinely enjoyed them. As for reading the books your parents love, it was impossible not to. Every available wall in the house was covered with bookshelves and if ever I wanted something to read, I just had to take one down. Without a doubt my love of SF and fantasy springs from early diets of Asimov, Clarke, and McCaffrey.

William Gibson likes V for Vendetta. I was going to see it anyway, but if Gibson likes it, it must be good 😉

I’m trying a new way of writing the Roast, because the Performancing extension was starting to bug the crap out of me. The upshot of this combination bookmark/txt file system seems to be the Sunday Roasts are once more up to a full three course meal. Tuck in!

Moose and I have had this ongoing dispute about whether you need to put gelatin in cheesecakes or not (I’m a yes girl, she’s a no). At the moment, the evidence is more in my favour than hers. Anyway, I saw this recipe for blueberry cheesecake and, whilst it doesn’t need gelatin, it does need baking. Still, looks absolutely scrum-diddly-uptious!

I’m a considerate experiencer. What are you? (Warning, it’s quite a long test. Took about five minutes).

I’m a bit on the fence with the whole ID card issue. I’m leaning more towards “I don’t want them” than “I do want them”, mainly because I can’t see the point of them. What do they do that current systems don’t do? And don’t spout on about how they’d stop terrorism… They won’t. Why I chose to link to this today is that we use exactly the same printers and system shown in the picture at work. Trust me: you do NOT want to be working in the department that makes these cards if/when they ever happen if they are still using that system. They are bad enough for a roll-out of around 25,000. I can imagine what it would be like nationwide and the thought makes me want to hide under the desk!

Now, I’m all for technology, but wouldn’t you feel a bit duped if you went to a book signing and just got a robot? Then again, at least Margaret Atwood was at the end of a video-link chatting. And calling it the “LongPen”? COME ON! You’re an author! Think up something a bit more original! Let’s have your suggestions in the comment field at the end of the post 😀

So CFS (chronic fatigue syndrom) sufferers aren’t making it up. I know I wasn’t faking when I spent three years of my life barely able to get out of bed to crawl to the bathroom and back, but somehow having some shred of organic proof to show that people like me weren’t/aren’t faking makes me feel so much better.

So I already kaboodled this trailer, but you might have missed it, tucked away as it is in the sidebar. So, I bring you the spine-tinglingly-good trailer for X Men 3: The Last Stand. I told the Crazy Canalman at the end of 2 that Jean Grey was gonna be back…

BoingBoing is always a great source of the odd and surreal. You do have to ask yourself though, what sort of person would get a tattoo of an Eames chair?

And they also have this link to the WTC in fries and ketchup. Not sure what A would say about having this as his memorial, but still, perhaps it is time we started to look at such events through a more comic lens.

Oh dear lord no. Vin Diesel is proposing more Riddick films…

Remember when I wondered why my server’s stats package even had a listing for Antarctica? Well, turns out there’s at least 64 people overwintering at the South Pole, and a fair few of them have blogs. Here are the ones that caught my eye:
Adventures au Pole Sud
Cynthia’s Polar Adventures
Nowhere To Go But Up
Phil Jacobsen
(The wonderful thing about a small community like the South Pole, all the bloggers seem to link to each other, so you should be able to ferret out more blogs if you want to).

Creationism is to be included in GCSE science syllabi. (Note, that’s in BRITISH schools). This was a headline guaranteed to make me sit up and get pissed off. Then I read the actual story – Creationism/ID isn’t being taught as science exactly. It’s being presented to kids so that they can discuss it as it relates to evolution. Still, I’d rather Creationism was taught in RE as it is, after all, religion. And left off for full comparative discussion in science till A-Level. A-Level science is when you traditionally start questioning the received wisdom you got to GCSE standard. It’s in those years that you start to see what you have learned so far is just the basics, the simplified groundwork upon which proper understanding is built. If you’re not of a mind to take science beyond GCSE level, then I doubt you’re really of a mind to be interested in the whole Creationism/ID/Darwinism debate. (For the record I studied Biology, Chemistry, and Physics at A-Level and was seriously considering doing a degree in Biology before Archaeology got me. It’s a running joke in A-Level science that you spend the first six months forgetting all you learnt up to GCSE, then the rest of the time coming to terms with the fact you will never have all the answers).
(Note: GCSE is the two years leading up to exams taken at around age 16. A-Level is the two years leading up to exams taken at around age 18. Then you go on to get an undergraduate degree).

The news that Channel 4 has bought the rights to the Fox film archive excited me almost as much as the news also presented in the article that Film Four is going to be free-to-air from the summer. I am so sad, but I do love film!

Ratings for ‘Joey’ are down, whilst ratings for ‘House’ are up. Now, I saw about ten minutes of a Joey episode, and that was all I could stomach (I was/am still a Friends fan though), and I never understood all the buzz surrounding House, though I am a Hugh Laurie fan, and have been since the days of Jeeves and Wooster. Now we’ve got Channel Five at Meadow Towers though, I’ve become something of a House addict. Only thing is, they’re showing Season Two, and I’m starting to want to get Season One out on DVD…

One of the reasons I like RSS so much is that it means I can subscribe to lots of sites, even ones that will only have content that interests me a few times a month, and be sure I won’t miss that content when it comes around. One of those times happened the other day, when Molly posted her <object>ification blues.
(That’s not to say Molly doesn’t have lots of interesting and good things to say all the time, just that most of it isn’t Roastable, so you never get to see I’m reading it. I do recommend you subscribe to her feed though. Lots of gold buried in them thar hills!)

And that’s it, though there’s always a few more things to look at if you want to.

I thought this was going to be a large ‘Roast… If you are curious as to how to make Firefox on the Mac fall flat on its face, try and open 100+ tabs at once. Yeah, my fault, I let the RSS build up for three days without checking. Gulp. Never going to do that again, I assure you! I really need to prune my feeds-list.

But, what with one thing and another, it’s turned out not to be of the same epic proportions of some of the better ‘Roasts. I think my mojo is still AWOL. Still, something is better than nothing, right? Enjoy 🙂

So very cynical. I love it.

It’s never to late to come to the party – Liz has a great post all about how blogs are tools.

MySpace.com attacked. *Bangs head against desk*
Then:
*Brings you another side of the debate*

And you wonder why women complain about running for the bus… (I need me a better sports bra. The current one is not quite up to the strain :S )

Worthy of the ‘Roast if only for the supreme beard and facial expression!

Ok, what you need to do is go to http://video.on.nytimes.com, go to the “David Pogue” section, and watch a few videos. The one that amused me most is the “Mobile Routers” one – worth it, if only for the shot of three Mini-Pogues all using laptops. Ok, so it is pronounced “Rooters” in most civilised countries, but we won’t hold it against the guy. If you were ever wondering why I still subscribe to the NYT? David Pogue is it 🙂

And the Brainy Snail would like to suggest this site for the Sunday Roast. Her reasoning?
Everyone likes a good dino.
Well, can’t say fairer than that, can you?

And Brainy Snail? You are now a Blog Minion. Welcome 🙂

That’s it for this week. I’m off to make a start on that quilt I promised for the Crazy Canalman this time last year :redface_wp: