Cas is currently

Ok, I’m not sure why I decided to do this, other than that Moose ambushed me with it late at night when I had spent most of the day writing a chapter entitled ‘The Theories Behind Electronic Publication’ . ^*1*

Racing Frogs.

Yes, you heard me, Racing Frogs. You create a frog, feed it, train it, be nice to it, and then at night it goes off and races other frogs. It will (apparently) be sending me an email every morning after a race, telling me how it went. I am sure as our relationship develops my frog will soon be letting me in on all the juicy gossip from the after-race parties, and asking my advice on this cute boy-frog from the next pond over…

I think it goes without saying that this is done on the Internet.

So, I started a frog, and will keep you updated on her progress. I thought it might be something nice that we can all do together, me and my blog minions…

Name: Lara Croak
Sex: Female
Pond: Stumpy Creek
CURRENT STATS:
Age: Young Hopper (3 days)
Grade: 1
Potential: 17.67
Todays form: 6 – feeling fine today
Fitness: 253
(Speed – 121
Strength – 62
Stamina – 24
Hopping – 46)
Contentment: 160
Owns: 2 items
(Pogo stick,
Anti Pike Transmitter)
Diet: standard
Medals: none

Go, get your own frog here, make sure they join the Stump Creek Pond, and our frogs can race.

Cas is currently

I have been playing around with some new toys in the past few days, the first being Kaboodle. It’s a kind of bookmarking/comparison site designed to make it easy to compare things from lots of different webpages in one place. Read the blub, have a play, see what you think. I have a policy that I try and wait till something has crossed my radar three times, or been used/mentioned by someone I really respect before I have a play. As Kaboodle fell into both catagories, I thought I had to give it a go.

I set up two pages (Sunday Roast and Must See Movies) before I started to get annoyed with the interface, the inability to search, the slowness, and other niggles. Also, I started to see problems regarding the weekly nature of the Sunday Roast and…

In the end I decided who was I kidding, and dusted off the old del.icio.us account. So, now for the Sunday Roast, all you have to do is go to http://del.icio.us/brightmeadow/sundayroast to see all the things I have tagged ‘sundayroast’. I will be adding throughout the week so hopefully, if you check throughout the week, it won’t be so overwhelming! There is an RSS feed, a link to which is also to be found in the ‘meta’ section of the Sidebar. I do recommend subscribing to it, because then you get them as and when I add them, one or two at a time.

There is a second tag I am going to be using a fair bit – ‘moviemust’. (http://del.icio.us/brightmeadow/moviemust), which also has its own RSS feed, which will again be put in the Sidebar. This is, as you might have guessed, a way of keeping track of the movies I want to see. This will mainly be based on the trailers. When (if) I see a give film, I will update its entry to reflect my opinion of it. Maybe.

This is all very new and I am just playing mainly, so I need feedback to tell me if you think it works or not.

I have a new section in the sidebar: Blog Stalking. In there you will find my latest attempt at displaying graphically where y’all come from. I am a nosy little so and so. Hopefully in the next day or so, the pretty graphic map will start to display where my visits have come from. If you want something a bit more personal, go to the Frappr Map and add yourself. I am not sure how long either feature is going to last – mainly it depends on how bored I remain, but also I expect, in a week or so, I am going to look like a Billy No Mates, so will take both down.

Till then, enjoy.

I will leave you with part of a meme I nabbed from Liz. Type ‘yourname needs’ into google and see what comes back at you. You’re meant to take the first ten results, but mine were boring. CAS is apparently some really dull acronymn. Claire, on the other hand needs, according to results two, three and four to:
* sheer all my sheep
* visit the bunny planet
* get the best therapy possible

Cas is currently

I think I have mentioned once or twice my appauling record when it comes to keeping plants alive. tSPFKAG , the Chives and two of the Basils still going in strong, which does surprise me. The Basils might be explained by now being in a monster pot with lots of other basils on the living room window sill here at Meadow Towers. Everything else I have ever tried to grow = dead.

Which is why I think I just did something very silly indeed. I was in Morrisons today (local supermarket), and they had this poor dejected mystery plant on sale for £2. It looked near dead, and I felt so sorry for it, that I purchased it, brought it home, repotted it, and plan to give it some TLC for whatever remains of its natural life.

There is one problem (other than the fact plants look at me and die), and it is this: I have no idea what sort of plant it is. So I am putting out a call to you, my blog minions, in the hope that at least one of you is more green fingered than myself. Type of plant, and care instructions please!

Click for clearer picture.

He also needs a name. It’s currently being called ‘the Fuggly Plant’, a name I object to for many reasons, not including its Warriors connotations and the fact that I find the poor thing rather attractive, in a sad puppy-dog kind of way.

Cas is currently

(I meant to blog this weeks ago, but hadn’t got around to it what with work, no network, being lazy, an all. So cast your minds back a few weeks to when I went back to the Homestead to pick up the Sofa ^*1*. This is the tale of part of that journey…)

Truly, you live in the deepest, darkest countryside when the train you take to get home is one carriage long. And I don’t mean by that one carriage connected to the train proper. I mean one carriage. The bit that makes it move is actually part of the thing. It’s tiny! I felt like such a fool waiting for it to pull out of the station the other week – like the driver had forgotten the rest of the train or something.

All around us were these trains longer than the platform going to exotic locations like London, Birmingham, Bristol, and there was me in a Hornby toy on platform 3b going to Westbury. For we didn’t even rate an entire platform to ourselves – we had to share the arse end of platform 3 with the 1115 to London Euston.

Truly, the Romance of Train Travel is dead.

Photographic evidence taken at great risk to life and limb (the guard was eyeing me suspiciously as I took them. Perhaps he thought I was a terrorist planning my next attack. Either that, or he was admiring my shiny new boots.) ^*2* As always, click to be taken to Flickr to see them full size with notes, and to comment and the like.

My silly short train. With no working toilet, I might add.

Part of the shiny long train (I couldn’t get far enough back to get it all in frame). I bet it had several working toilets.

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Power to the people!
A little while back I blogged about how the RSS feed for the New York Times movie reviews lacked a title telling you what the movie being reviewed was.

And what to I get greeted with when I open up Vienna this morning? RSS feeds from the NYT with the movie title in the headline! Look, I have a screenshot to prove it!

Now, I am not saying that I am single handedly responsible for this change, but I like to think that my input might have shifted the scales ever so slightly. If you have a problem with something, it really is worth telling the people involved about it. Especially in this day and age of e-mail and faceless communication. The worst that can happen is they ignore you or send a nasty e-mail back. But who knows? You might end up marginally influencing a major publishing house to change their format.

Today is going to be a good day, I can tell.

Cas is currently

Oooch (as certain Scottish relatives would say) I have been neglecting you something wrotten lately, haven’t I? Leaving you without even the comfort of the Sunday Roast. I was all set and then… didn’t get around to it.

Before I leave you alone with the best of the rest, I would just like to go :O at the rapid uptake of RSS among bloggers out there. There’s some research which I won’t go into now which sets the figure at only 12% of Internet users having heard of RSS and only 4% knowingly use it (though around 27% use RSS without knowing what the frell it is). Whatever the figure, in the last few months the list of people who are classed as ‘non-RSS’ in my bookmarks has rapidly gone down from 50 to four. Yes, four. I won’t name-and-shame them (yet). I was just rather impressed by the rapid level of uptake of RSS. Then again, I have a feeling that blogger (and other platforms) now have RSS turned on as standard, and most people aren’t even aware of what this RSS malarky is. Still, I’m not complaining – it lets me know when a given blog has new content, and often means I don’t have to leave my aggregator to view that content, which was great when I was in dial-up/non-wireless internet hell up till the other day.

Whilst I leave you thinking about that, have at the following as well:

Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary

Christian children’s colouring book from 1954. Way to teach inclusion and acceptance!

* Dr Atomic opera. A nuclear bomb themed opera… odd, but apparently really rather good.

40 Year Old Penguin Exorcism…

Tit Bits.

Distraction. I hear what the man says!

Zombie Worms. For the CC, the man who can get the phrase ‘real zombies’ and ‘real vampires’ into the conversation.

* David Pogue’s iPod Video review. The man acutally walked into a steel girder during the review! LOL!

Paltrow bemoans life in Britain. If life in Britain is so bad, why does she live here?

Pittsburgh unprepared for full-scale zombie attack. From Minion Moose.

US Chicken in jaywalking fine. Only in the States.

Flock. Not used it yet – really should be doing things other than playing with new toys, but when the thesis is over, I will behaving a look.

The Family Stone trailer. I don’t know why, but I want to see this film.

Propellerhead. For all you Windows people out there, this man has some VERY good tips and tricks.

Disposable Scrabble Game. Because you never know when the urge to play Scrabble will strike.

All Your Base Rhapsody. So, so, sooooo very funny!

Guiness Evolution ad. You know what? This isn’t even a thing over here. We don’t care.