Month: January 2010

January 30, 2010
A little bargain from the Cargo Home Shop: 12 reusable silicon cupcake cases, for 4.50. The cases are smaller than a standard muffin, but that suits my purpose brilliantly, to give me something small but tasty with my mid-morning and afternoon tea!

January 30, 2010
Using this little tip, I now have an rss feed of LiveJournal Friends posts appearing on my iGoogle page. I found the instructions easy to follow, except I didn’t realise the significance of the “&checkcookies=1” parameter, which is required if you either want protected entries to appear on the list, or to use “Default View” to display just a selection of your Friends.

January 29, 2010
About ten years ago, when I lived in Brighton, I had a pet called Bambi. I took my responsibilities very seriously, and made sure that it was always warm and well fed.

But then my life changed. With a new career, I was away on business a lot, and not at home to take care of things. For a few months, I was technically homeless, and it became clear Bambi would have to go. I asked various friends if they would offer a home, but no-one seemed interested, so in the end I flushed Bambi down the loo.

January 29, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, the door hinge of my washing machine broke. It’s not an uncommon problem – my mum had the same washing machine (Hotpoint WM63), and she had at least two sets of replacement hinges – one set last year. For that reason, I knew she had paid 60 pounds to have them refitted – barely more than the minimum call out charge.

So I called Hotpoint, and was told that it would cost me 120 pounds. That is to have this fitted:

January 29, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, the door hinge of my washing machine broke. It’s not an uncommon problem – my mum had the same washing machine (Hotpoint WM63), and she had at least two sets of replacement hinges – one set last year. For that reason, I knew she had paid 60 pounds to have them refitted – barely more than the minimum call out charge.
So I called Hotpoint, and was told that it would cost me 120 pounds. That is to have this fitted:

January 28, 2010
I’ve recently read a couple of friends posting about their dreams, and I thought I would recount this little story, which I find a little spooky.

I don’t generally remember dreams, but some years back, I used to have recollections of some very vivid ones. One recurring dream was of discovering a whole secret wing of my flat (apartment). At the time I was living in a flat comprising of the ground floor of an small Victorian house – a large lounge, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. In the dream, it was the same flat, but in a much bigger house, and I would discover that by going down some stairs I had several more large rooms. I dreamt of this several times, and each time I recall being pleased, but doing no more than think “these rooms will be useful when I need them”. In another related dream, I had the knowledge of the new-found rooms, but either couldn’t remember how to get to them, or had lost the key to a vital door that would let me in.

January 28, 2010
“There is an unlikely new player in the British film industry with ambitions to change the world of entertainment. Tesco, the supermarket giant, has moved into movie mogul territory this weekend with the launch of a multi-million-pound production arm poised to make films of books by a slew of bestselling authors.”

via Tesco sets up film studio to adapt hit novels | Business | The Observer.

January 23, 2010
I am in the midst of moving my various websites from their individual websites, to bring them altogether on a Virtual Private Server.

I’ve been hosting with Xcalibre for several years, and I am not exactly abandoning them – they have sold off their hosting operation to Webfusion, who just happened to have some decent deals on VPS, so I am transferring it all across.

January 22, 2010
Memento has long been a favourite film of mine. Those of you who have seen it will know that the story is told largely in reverse chronology, with intercut narrative in the correct chronology. From that description, you’d think it’d be hard to follow, but it does make sense.

Anyway, I was telling some friends the other day about a DVD Easter Egg, which rearranges the whole film in chronological order, and realised that I had never watched it that way. I had read some criticisms that without the non-linear editing, there isn’t that much to the story.

January 19, 2010
My poor garden! I let it go somewhat last year, and I haven’t spent much time out there over the winter. Looking at it today, I realised I need to spend a few days out there, raking the dead stuff up, and generally getting it ready for this year’s sowing.

Yes, it’s coming up to that time again, so is there anyone out there who would like to take part in a little postal seed swap? Due to the (small) size of my little plot, I always end up with more seed of any particular type than I actually need, and on top of that, the two magazines that I enjoy – Kitchen Garden and Grow Your Own – invariably come with a packet or two of seed on the front page.

January 19, 2010
Overnight, my Wordpress blog appears to have been hit by comment spam, and lots of it. Fortunately, none of it got through to the publicly viewed part of the website.

I’ve now enabled a couple of features I hadn’t previously bothered with, which should put paid to this little game.