Aw Diddums

Mood: Sad
Listening to: Tinnitus

I am moving my blog to WordPress. It will take me a longish time to get all my posts across as I don't think I can export them from here the usual way, especially as the feeds here on Blogigo have vamooshed.

If you are curious about Aw Diddum's old posts, you can always wander across to WordPress and see them as they come up... I'm starting from the very first post and moving on up. it's a great opportunity for me to edit the trail of verbiage I left in my wake during the glory days of Blogigo.

Presumably I won't be able to transfer visitors' old comments across, though I would if I could. Bummer.

I will continue to post any thoughts that come to mind, but not here - not any more. I'll put them on my Emergency Blogspot - that's what it's there for, after all, and it still has a feed!

See you there (and eventually here as well!)

Happy Christmas and festivities to everybody - it's been grand here on Blogigo but I must move on.

Mood: Getting on and climbing out of my fog of funk
Listening to: Bee Gees tape

Folk are supposed to give honest (but tactful) appraisals of each other's work on an art site I'm on, but that can be a hard thing to do, presumably for the following reasons:

1. "don't want to hurt their feelings"
2. "not sure I know enough to be able to judge"
3. "don't want to get involved; too busy"
4. "don't want to lose my friends"
5. "I'm sure they can see their own mistakes, or will eventually"
6. "someone else will bring it up; I don't have to"
7. "I don't want to end up getting nasty messages"
8. "if I don't like it, silence will tell them all they need to know"

Number 8 is the most depressing.

I've had my weak moments - in fact, most of the time I'm weak, and either I point out all the best features then shuffle off cravenly, or say nothing at all. But occasionally (usually when I see enough in the picture that I like) I'll stick my head over the parapet and say "wonder what it'd look like if you..."

And so far nobody's put a bullet through my helmet.

Well, there was one glancing shot I wasn't sure of, just a private message that seemed to suggest the photo was just how it was, and couldn't be re-shot - take it or leave it. Ignored that one!

Actually, it's amazing how thick my skin has become lately, but every so often an arrow will strike home, and I'll curl up in front of the TV for a couple of days. Every day that you post or comment on the internet, you know you're risking that.

A couple of weeks ago on the art site I spotted a thumbnail I quite liked, but when I called up the image full-size it struck me as strange and unsatisfying. When you run your eyes over a picture, you like it to be sharp here, soft there, and nothing interrupting the flow of it without reason. It's almost as if you know already how that picture should look, and you're comparing the real one with the ideal.

The one I was looking at fell short - nobody would ever have framed it and put it on their wall, or used it in a magazine advert. I still believe that.

There had been two or three comments already, saying "very nice."
I screwed my courage to the sticking place and said, "well I liked the such and such, which caused me to open the thumbnail, but (blah tactful blah tactful blah) - keep working on it!"

I kept an eye on it to see if anybody else agreed with me, or in case I got a response from the photographer. He never did respond, but the list of comments grew as long as my arm and longer still. Every day there would be a few more, and every single one of them said:

"Oh, wonderful work, my dear! This needs nothing changed. I love this."

I seriously began to wonder what was wrong with me, especially as I had been watching another photographer whose works are (without fail) dull, featureless and oversharpened. But everyone else falls into ecstasies over her gallery. It's almost as though she has groupies - but surely they're groupies for a reason?

It really makes me wonder if my sense of aesthetics is broken. I got so desperate I called in Mum for her opinion on the photographer with the groupies. She scrolled through the gallery, said "BORING!", got out of her chair, and left. All in three seconds flat.

Can't just be me, then?

The last straw thudded onto my back when the image I'd criticized in the comments was put on the site's front page. It's not 'image of the week' or anything like that; they just get together a group of images to share the limelight for a while and to reel the casual surfers in. I have a sneaky feeling at least one of my images got in there; a handful of comments came out of the blue from people who don't normally comment on my stuff - but it was never proven! That's why I tell people "I found this image on the front page" - just so they know. They're usually pleased enough to say "thanks for telling me."

The moderators don't put anything they don't like on the front page, so when I saw that half-baked picture up there, I started to lose my grip. I said to myself, "I really must be missing something! How can I ever expect to turn out good work myself when I don't recognize it in others?"

It's possible that certain images naturally look more beautiful on a PC. My Mac sits next to my PC, and I can see the differences clearly. The Mac brightens everything up, tones everything down and warms the colour - thus things stand out that aren't even visible on the PC. It's caught me out in the past when I thought I'd made a nice graphic on the PC, but it looked absolutely horrible on the Mac - you could see the areas I thought were carefully blended into the background.... So perhaps I could see flaws in the picture that the PC users couldn't.

I was on the point of posting a thread in the discussion forums to ask if people viewed wallpapers full size (largest size size possible) before commenting - they will miss grain, blemishes and other peculiarities if they don't. I never got that far - it appears that other people had been simmering silently as well.

Someone exploded into life and posted a thread asking why people will butter up everybody else rather than be honest - we are supposed to be helping each other, not over-inflating egos. There followed a long and interesting discussion... buoyed up by it, I found a wallpaper by a 15 year-old. He's only received a few comments, mostly by others around the same age who saw his works as 'cool'. They were, but could be cooler still. I said I liked it a lot, but what I looked for in a picture was... (blah tactful blah tactful blah).

For a couple of days, all was silent (nothing unusual in that, so it didn't trouble me).

Earlier last night I was watching Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, all the time thinking about StumbleUpon, people (both online and offline), my blogs and every other online presence I have. I felt singularly useless, as though I'm just whispering into a void. Who cares what I think? What difference does any of it make? I'm not really helping myself or anyone else, and StumbleUpon is lots of fun but a huge waste of time. All it is, is a jumble of odd photos, cartoons, videos and pages of links and tips being shuttled around... some of it useful but most not.

My jaw set hard as I watched Mad Max... I'm quite sure he'd have stared me into the ground if I started waffling to him about blogs, StumbleUpon and online communities in general.

I still had to check my email, so (having left the computer off all day) I went upstairs about 23:00 and fired up the Mac. Even while I was waiting for it to power up, I was grumbling to myself "why am I doing this, even though I just told myself it was as piffle before the wind, and unimportant in anyone's life...? I should leave it till tomorrow."

But I found a response from the 15 year-old artist: "Thanks for your advice, I'm actually working on redoing that particular piece right now and that seems to be exactly what I couldn't figure out about the first draft."

See, I can make a difference!
Whoo.

That was probably one of the nicest things somebody's said to me for a while - that I offered something useful at the right moment. Even if it was via the anonymous, wayward, unheeding, overloaded, shadowy internet!

PS: You don't have to believe my remarks about StumbleUpon, which came out of a fit of depression. While there, I have found many pages of more than passing interest to me, and amongst them was this article on the rival attractions of Facebook and StumbleUpon. Ultimately it's what people choose to make of the tools they have. In StumbleUpon's case, it's all about quality content - we have to fix on that and not on traffic. Forget the traffic - choose quality over quantity, and give good solid reviews so that people know where you're coming from.

I'm not especially keen on stumbling across isolated pictures... there are many beautiful ones for sure, but they seem so much out of context. (What? Who? Where? Why?) I don't often rate those at all, but I'll rate an entire site of pictures so that people can look themselves.

I'll pick out specific blog posts for StumbleUpon attention - we should see more of those, and not just from the techy or news blogs.

PPS: I won't be doing that right now - got to get on with some work. To help me in that, I should turn off the computer... with its siren call and its myriad of shadowy souls...

Mood: Sighing
Listening to: James Galway: The Man with the Golden Flute

With his article ...on pimping your browser, Stephen Fry will have prompted a spate of people to try out new 'skins' on their Firefox browsers - including me. I looked at the themes before, in fact only a few days ago, but what always put me off going for any of the Firefox add-ons is the message "unsigned... you should only install software from sources that you trust."

My mother...? That rather limits my options!

This time I decided if those themes on the Firefox page were fine for Stephen Fry, they were fine for me... (cue all those techy guys to snort even more). If anything goes wrong, though, I won't blame him - I'll blame myself for finally giving way to temptation.

I downloaded a bundle of Firefox themes from the Mozilla site and went through them, one by one. Most of them were too grey. What is it about the colour grey?? I don't mind silvery ones if they do have a bit of a shine to them, but flat grey or even pale grey mixed with white has always struck me as rather dreich.

But look who's blogging - you only need to glance at this theme and my other one on the Blogspot to realize that grey doesn't have a lot of place in my life. (I wish they would come up with some nicer-coloured Nav bars in Blogger - the other three are even worse).

It doesn't stop with the web... I don't use plain white pages in my general applications if I can avoid it. Ages ago I went into the Firefox preferences, clicked on the Content tab and changed the page colour to a soft violet blue. Sometimes it shows up behind web pages... for instance, it will show up if you go into Newsgator (possibly only if you have an account) and change from the 'beta reader' to the classic reader. I don't want to be backward in any way, seeming like someone who can't abide change, but I didn't like the beta reader because there was much more white in it - and web pages with more than a certain amount of white in them dazzle my eyes. I switched back to my nice kind classic reader, but they say it will be phased out in time. Sigh.

I've tinted my MS Word documents on the PC (I can't remember how, so don't ask me), but couldn't figure out how to do it on the Mac. (There's a 'blue backgrounds, white text' option, but that's too far the other way!) All my Eudora emails arrive in a lovely shade of cornflower blue.

For me white is too bright, black is too dark, and grey is too... um... (trying to be polite as it's just struck me that a lot of my favourite sites use white and grey. Caedes.net, for example. Maybe Caedes would say it's so that our pictures will stand out better. Sure. Sigh).

In StumbleUpon I was disappointed because all the colours are on the dark side for me. There's an option with a pale blue header but the rest of the page is a stark staring white. There's a pink with a nice design at the foot, but it's far too strong a pink for me. All the other colours are dark, except for a grey header with white... There seems to be no way of personally customizing your StumbleUpon page.

What? Yes, I'm on StumbleUpon now. But that's a story for another time.

I've just realized you don't have to fiddle around in Newsgator to see what I mean about tinted Firefox pages showing up through the web page... you get that on the StumbleUpon home page too. Looks rather good. Much better than plain white.

My favourite Firefox 'skin' or theme so far is CloudGnome. But I've just spotted another theme that somehow I missed the first time round, so don't assume that is my final choice...


PS: If you're skipping across to the Blogspot to see what kind of bish I made of it, don't forget to vote in the 'feeds' poll while you're there.

Mood: Still messing around doing not very much - terrible!
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'We Are Homeless' by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon

Some more random notes from the past, found amongst my papers.

The following snippet concerned an interview for a book-binding job I attended. The job was based round some really vicious machinery. All my previous editing work has been based around computer databases and filing cabinets:

Me: They asked if there was anything about the editing work that bore any relation to the job I was applying for - I couldn't really see any similarity so said no!
Mum: Books!

---

Me: Did she manage to put it down?
Mum: She's still shaking upstairs.

---

Me: This is the carnivorous café
My sister (a vegetarian): Café Carnivore - only well behaved vegetarians permitted.

---

Me (having one of my mini rants): That Oxfam book shop is the worst yet. £2.49 for old/new sci-fi paperbacks. £1.49 for thin kid's paperback. £1.99 for filthy tattered pb of no particular interest. They said "we have more in stock" - I'm not surprised! Oh, and £6.99 for a small Concise Oxford Dictionary.

---

Me: If Sharky doesn't play with the Xmas tree it will be a source of amazement to other cat people.
Mum: Yes. (Probably thinking of her cat Cheeky, who can never stay on the ground).

(I don't think he ever played with it - but he loved to gaze).

---

Me (of my sister's cats, one a proud mum and the other a proud aunt): Suki was egging Muppet on - seems they BOTH wanted the kittens to go downstairs with them, and they tried to get me to help.
My sister: They were all halfway down last night.

(I still remember that - those cats made me feel like Third Wife, to be bossed around. "Come ON - and bring that one with you!")

Mood: Still messing around doing not very much - bad!
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'Malaika' by Miriam Makeba

This article from The Guardian made my hair stand up on end, I was so angry:

Revealed: how UK banks exploit charity tax laws.

The worst thing about it is that many of them say they do it because it's normal practice. The same banks who put commercials on the TV about not being sheep, or expecting their clients to be sheep... "follow, don't lead."

Quite.

Mood: Still messing around doing not very much - bad!
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'Malaika' by Miriam Makeba

Looking at the Blogger in Draft news for December 4th about Subscription Links, I fell to wondering. At first I thought "oh, new (or updated) feature, got to go and turn that on!" Then I stopped and thought "but I never wanted those things. I never use them on other sites - why would I want them on mine?"

The issue is probably not whether I want them, but whether others use them? In my case I have a quick way of subscribing to a blog - it's Bloglines, and I have a 'subscribe with Bloglines' button permanently in my Firefox toolbar. As I know exactly where that button is, it saves me searching round the blog for something that might not be there.

My guess is that most other people have got it sorted out as well - they have their own ways of subscribing? I left a poll in the sidebar of my emergency blogspot - hoping for a few votes. It's up till 14th December.

Maybe it would only help a new person who was looking to start a feed account somewhere. I've put it on my emergency blogspot so people can see what I'm talking about - it's at the bottom of the sidebar. There's a subscribe to 'comments feeds' as well. I only ever do that if I'm given the option... I don't know if there are ways of subscribing to comments feeds even without the handy clicky box?

Anyway - who wants to subscribe to a potty emergency blog...? (Listens to the silence that echoes back). Ah well. It's just that when Blogigo blows up in my face, you would know if and when I switched over to the blogspot channel...

This is the song that's in my head just now... just to give this blog post some atmosphere. :-).

It's not actually my favourite version - I prefer it quick and jolly, as sung in the version we had... possibly Fadhili William himself, but I don't have the single here to check. There's no video clip that I can find.

What annoys me about some clips on YouTube is that they say something like 'Dithery Song by Original Famous Singer of Dithery Song'... and when you look at it, it's NOT that singer... it's somebody else you don't even recognize. If I didn't have some idea what I was looking at (or at least a niggly feeling of doubt), that would be really misleading.

Mood: No better than yesterday and the day before - I should be doing other things
Listening to: 'Homeless, homeless, moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake'...

My sister found 'more neighbour wilting stuff' - this one a video clip of Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It's 'We Are Homeless', if I remember right. My best friend at university hated it - she said it sounded like someone panicking, and it made her panic too.

Currently I'm trying to sort through boxes and files of paper and notepads from my house. It's a boring job and I really don't want to do it - except that I keep finding some strange things. There was a tiny hand-made book with mostly blank white pages in it. The names of countries were written at the top of the pages in my neatest tiniest handwriting. Not all of the pages are blank... there's an old Chinese stamp, and three old Indian stamps... all in very poor condition, and all quite old. I'm not a stamp collector and never really fancied the idea, so I was completely stumped. What WAS this?

Mum is the stamp collector - she took a look and said they had bits missing and are worthless. She must have chucked them away. I said maybe I made it for one of my... ah!! And suddenly a memory flooded into my brain... only it felt more like a realization than a memory. It HURT. I didn't remember it... it all just felt right. Just the sort of strange thing I would have done around the age of 23... I made it for one of my bears' children.

Good grief.

Even worse, I have just this minute found a blank A4 sheet of paper... blank, that is, except for something written at the top in my handwriting.

"Not heard from you for a while. Are you still alive, or have you been overtaken by the Saargataans and made to lose your memory of who you are and who you know?"

I don't remember it at all - and I don't remember who the Saargataans are. Perhaps it was me they caught up with?

Mood: No better than yesterday - I should be doing other things
Listening to: Karl Denver's Wimoweh is in my head - even the dancers are there, drat them

Something that annoys me about myself is that, when I'm disagreeing with someone's words, it's sometimes not till I take it up and start writing about it, referring back to the original statement, that I realize (1) they weren't saying what I thought they said; (2) they had a perfectly good point.

It takes the wind out of my sails and then I can't express my disagreement, and that's so disappointing...

Huff.

But because I've at least gone back and pored scarily over it, I do get a better hold on what the other person was really saying... I wonder how many people just ignore it and shuffle away, and go to the end of their lives not realizing the unplumbed depths of those unsatisfying conversations. Most likely that's the lot of those who don't want to cause any ripples or unpleasantness by taking up this issue or that. It's a little unfair on those you're being polite to.

This thought wasn't sparked off by any blogs I read today, yesterday or at any time, just in case you're wondering! No, it was an email I got a few nights ago and am still pondering. At first it disappointed me, and I determined not to answer it, but then I went back and read it again. And I saw a slant that wasn't obvious before. I think it was the fault of my expectations - I thought I would get a full agreement to something I said, but in fact it was a considered reply along the lines of "we both might feel that, but it's worth remembering..."

New angles to discuss! I like that.

I just this moment looked up my horoscope (by accident actually)... it says:

Communication of various types will be your entertainment, your nemesis, and your inspiration today. Watch the emails that come in to you - one of them has a great opportunity hidden inside. Click to find your next social highlight. A tricky conversation late in the afternoon (gulp) might throw you off your balance a bit, but the battle of wits will be fun and invigorating. Before the day is through, an inspiring song lyric, poem or even just a friend's email rant will spark a new idea.

Hmm - I like these energetic, communicative, inspirational days. Bring it on!

PS Last night I changed the template of my emergency Blogspot. It's not as wonderful as a lot of the customized templates I've seen out there, but it's less boring than the last one.

Mood: Parlous state
Listening to: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'

The feeds to my Aw Diddums blog on Blogigo haven't been working ever since that fateful day when I was having the redirect problems - I don't think it's a coincidence. The 'page visits' haven't been working for even longer. I don't know why things remain broken on Blogigo for so long... I don't think there's any blogging platform anywhere that rings all the bells, though.

Meanwhile...

Iain from Posted Notes directed me to this catchy version of Wimoweh - by Karl Denver. It's striking indeed, though I'm not sure I would have known what it was if I hadn't been told. I like the song and the singers' faces - though it would be better without the dancers! It's as though they're doing the Highland Fling very badly in the background, which is distracting.

I looked around, and you must see this: Mbube by a young Miriam Makeba. It's my new Must Listen To Till the Neighbours Wilt.

I also found an article on Mbube: Does this song sound familiar?

I was always nervous of the phrase 'it rocks', as it always sounded as though it meant "that's terrible!" Seeing the spate of messages along the lines of "My blog platform rocks, Blogger drools," however, I take it it's supposed to be good.

Miriam Makeba rocks.

Mood: Mildly struck
Listening to: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'

On YouTube I kept listening to The Lion Sleeps Tonight clip (otherwise known as Wimoweh). With it still ringing in my ears, I went to comment on Goldfish's latest blog post. The captcha was ihweh.

Mood: A little cheesed off
Listening to: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'

I edited my Blogger profile so that it's just a tiny bit more interesting. It occurred to me to put my main blog in as 'my web page'. So all is not completely lost. I'm still not happy with the new commenting method.

There was something else I was going to say - now, what was it? Oh yes, there's a conversation going on over here at Suburban Oblivion about the Blogger/Google comments.

I thought there was still something else. No, it's completely gone...

Oh wait!! I doubt if you read my long post Puzzled Blogger about yesterday's trials and tribulations with my main blog, but one of the things I mentioned was that we've always had this problem on Blogigo (not just me) of our profiles saying we all lived in Afghanistan. It didn't matter how often we tried to change that (and yes, we clicked on the 'save changes' button), it completely ignored us.

I thought it was a purely Blogigo quirk, so imagine how I felt when I went into the Blogger profile to edit it, and it said THERE that I came from Afghanistan.

I think they should add a new country to the drop-down menu of countries, as I'm living there instead... The Twilight Zone.

Mood: A little cheesed off
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'Wimoweh'

I got this horoscope today...

One good turn deserves another, so do a helpful friend a favour today. Maybe they just need you to hang out with them while they wait for a repairman, or maybe they need you to run a few small errands. Short of giving up one of your vital organs, you should quickly and eagerly give them whatever they want today. Chances are, they just want some of your time. The two of you will make fun out of the chore...

Yes... I spent all day yesterday waiting for the repairman for my blog. I would say they got that horoscope inside out. Still - it's time to listen to Wimoweh and remember that nothing matters...

Mood: Had enough
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'Trials and Tribulations' from JCS

I've just had the following Awful Experience, which threw me for a loop.

1) In the morning I turned on the computer to check my email and for any blog comments. Everything seemed fine. I wrote a new blog post and posted it.

2) Went away for a coffee.

3) Returned to my blog to make a change... it said 'server not found.'

4) Every so often I tried again... after a while the message changed to: "The page isn't redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies."

5) I tried other blogs and discovered that all the blogigo.co.uk blogs came up with the same error. All blogigo.com, blogigo.de, blogigo.cn and blogigo.at blogs were still accessible.

6) If I went to blogigo.co.uk's home page, everything came up in German.

7) I tried to view my blog in the Safari browser - same sort of error message about the redirects having gone wrong.

8) Switched to my PC and tried to get my blog in I.E. 6. There was no error message but nothing came up either - it kept loading, and loading, and loading.... I finally stopped it.

9) I kept an eye on the feeds in Bloglines and Newsgator - none of the Blogigo blogs updated at all.... in fact they started to show errors in the Bloglines feed window.

10) I checked for Firefox updates - there was one, so I installed it. No change. Checked extensions (only three) and pop-up ad settings - nothing made a difference.

11) Eventually (after a few hours of this), an email arrived - it was a comment to one of my blog posts from Kate Blogs at Itisi. Did this mean she could view the blog? I still couldn't.

12) I emailed my sister for input, and she said she couldn't see my site either, and got the same 'redirect loop' error message.

13) Got a message from Iain at Posted Notes to say he could see my blog fine, using Safari on the Mac. But my Safari on my own Mac was still returning error messages - and so was Firefox.

14) Around this time I discovered it was possible to edit and post on my blog - I followed the link on the comment email from Kate Blogs to manage the comment, and was able to activate it... but I still couldn't view my blog. Everything was in German, but I knew my way around. If I clicked on a link that said 'Freundschaften', it said 'buddies' in the URL.

15) I looked in mein profil and discovered I was apparently (and nonsensically) a citizen of Afghanistan (something I tried to change several times several months ago, and it never made any difference). I tried again, pulling down the list of countries, and looked for the United Kingdom. It wasn't there. Nor was the UK, Great Britain, Britain or Scotland. I don't think Großbritannien was there but I could be wrong. I still didn't want to be in Afghanistan, so I changed my location to 'Irland' - much nearer home!

16) Switched over to the PC to look for my blog on I.E. 6 - and suddenly it was viewable!!

17) Tried on the Mac to get my blog, but both Firefox and Safari gave me the 'poor redirection' error messages. Quit them and opened them again. Error messages. Shut the Mac down, started it up again. Error messages.

18) Tore out a few handfuls of hair.

19) Did some searching on the issue (discovering in the process that the Google search engine is indeed vastly superior to WebFetch. So Pacian hinted, and I believe him now). The 'redirect' problem seems to plague unsuspecting surfers from time to time, and the issues are almost always to do with Firefox and/or Safari, with I.E. sometimes doing the 'can't load the page either' thing... so actually I'm not all that convinced by that argument. I think they all do it.

20) Was still thinking about how Bloglines couldn't get any information either... looked at our feed pages. Got error messages of a different type - "Fatal error: Call to undefined function apache_request_headers() in /home/p3210/html/blog/rss.php on line 5".

21) Cleared my Firefox cache and also (reluctantly) removed all my Firefox cookies. Quit Firefox. Started it up again.... Bloglines, Newsgator and Caedes didn't recognize me any more, but my blog was still showing me the 'not redirecting properly' error. Sigh.

22) Went to blogigo.co.uk's home page and...... this time it showed up in English! Showing English blogs! Not a word of German. I clicked on the link to my blog, and.....

23).... IT SHOWED UP!

24) Stared at it as though I had dragged it bodily out of a terrible quicksand. Checked its pulse.

25) Struck by a strange suspicion, I started up Safari and looked for my blog... and it showed up there as well. The mystery is that I didn't clear the cookies or cache for Safari, so there should have been no change.

26) Started to suspect it had nothing whatsoever to do with clearing the cache or deleting cookies. Somebody just fixed an error somewhere out there... it never had anything to do with my computers or settings. Surely?

27) Logged in and went into my profile - I was back in Afghanistan. Pulled down the menu of countries, and looked for the United Kingdom. There it was, right next to the United States.

28). What a waste of a day. I had all sorts of other plans for it. I should have turned the computer off and ignored it till later, but as soon as I got troubled about this, I couldn't concentrate on anything else. After all, there's nothing more disturbing than looking into the Mystery of the Missing Blog only to discover that an entire continent has gone missing as well.

I need a holiday somewhere nice - perhaps Afghanistan.

Mood: Fed up
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'Trials and Tribulations' from JCS

There seems to be some work going on in Blogigo. A few times I have logged out and then tried to go back in for something, only to be faced with a message that everything is being moved to a faster server. Well, that's good. . Perhaps some of the other site glitches will be sorted out as well, in time. That recent problem with new posts not appearing on the home page has already been dealt with.

Just now it seems to be the blogigo.co.uk domain that's affected - something to do with a loop of redirects that doesn't work. The other Blogigo blogs (non-UK) are showing up. Maybe there's a reason for it - wish I knew.

Just to moan a little, it's frustrating when you post something, spot a typo straight away - and when you go back in to correct it, you can't, because the site is down. It's then a case of 'hold that thought' till it all comes back online again.

The typo looms larger and larger in your mind, like a spot on the nose.

The thought that nobody can see it right now is not a comfort - you just know when you give up and stop watching the site that the blog post will immediately reappear to the view of the world, complete with typo.

You are also reminded that because the blog post has gone offline, any subscribers getting notifications that there's a new post will try to view it - to no avail. The past three times I've posted something, the site has gone offline very quickly afterwards! It's not me, though - this poor site gets so many spammers posting their boring little splogs here that your own post doesn't stay at the top of the 'recent posts' list for very long. Probably the sploggers are the ones breaking Blogigo. It's their loss as well as ours, is all I can say.

I'm off for lunch. Bet the site comes back online the minute I leave the room. (Trails off, moaning like Marvin the robot).

Mood: Sleepy
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'The Last Supper' from JCS

Thailand Gal suggests that everybody answers these 35 questions. Sometimes I think it's easier to give a point of view if you're prompted for it, rather than come out with odd snippets out of the blue... and some of these things are good to own up to.

I enjoyed filling this out. Some questions I've answered before (but can still come up with something new), whereas others were quite hard to answer, and made me think.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A more inclusive world with more balanced aims and methods and far fewer control freaks.

2. What is your greatest fear?
Being misunderstood, spurned and never fully heard.

3. Which living person do you most admire?
I really don't know. I tried to think whose ways I've rather liked recently, and the first to leap to mind was C.J. from the Eggheads. Don't ask me. That was just the first figure to mind. After Stephen Fry.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Not living up to my own expectations.

5. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
The tendency to dismiss other people, views and experiences as worthless or 'wrong'.

6. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
I have to agree with Thailand Gal - it's being 'hard working'. You have to see the bigger picture and the people around you - not just your own little treadmill.

7. On what occasion do you lie?
Polite lies - "I really enjoyed the dinner." Or "I would love to come but I'm too busy that day."
Also, "I would really love this job because..."

8. What do you dislike most about your appearance?
My hair needs cutting - and my talons need filing or trimming or something. Again.

9. What is your greatest regret?
Not knowing older family members better, including my dad who died when I was 24.

10. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
A certain lad from Singapore. He came the closest to accepting me for who I was.

11. Which talent would you most like to have?
Clearer, more fluent speech.

12. What is your current state of mind?
'Hunger' seems to be the best description - not for food, but for all the things I want to say and achieve right now. I want more hours in the day.

13. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I have to say it, because it's true - I would welcome nice crisp hearing, just a little bit better than everybody else's! Just for a change.

14. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
2002 Winning the British Mensa Championsh.... oh, wait! That wasn't me, that was C.J.
Several times Best in Show Oriental... nuh uh, that was Sharky.
Er.
Oh I know... getting born. All those other spermatazoa were loooooosers.

15. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A cat - a well-loved one in a warm home.

16. What is your most treasured possession?
My little house.

17. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
When I worry that nobody understands where I'm coming from and is not prepared to try. A sinking suspicion that people are too busy going round and round in their hamster wheels to stop and really connect.

18. Where would you like to live?
Kenya - or a more rural area of Scotland.

19. What is your most marked characteristic?
Worry.

20. Who are your favorite writers?
Writers with three-dimensional characters, intelligent plots, humour, perceptiveness... who do not have an abrasive style.

21. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Same as Thailand Gal's - Anne Shirley. She was a writer and a dreamer. I tried to come up with somebody different, but got stuck. Moominmamma? You'd all think I was crazy.

22. Who are your heroes in real life?
It has to be my family - I see their lives first hand, with the various trials and tribulations that beset them.
'Look at all my trials and tribulations.... sinking in a gentle pool of wine. What's that in the bread? It's gone to my head; until this evening this morning life was fine.' [Jesus Christ Superstar]

23. What is it that you most dislike?
Narrow-mindedness; lack of empathy; sweeping views; derisiveness; coarseness; loudness.

24. What is your motto?
'It will all be the same in a hundred years.'

25. Favorite journey?
Chuffing across Kenya by overnight train.

26. What do you value most in your friends?
Willingness to communicate; reliability; kindness.

27. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Personally..."
"What?"
"Sorry, didn't catch that."
"Oddly enough..."
"I was just thinking..."
"Oh, I didn't realize."
"Sigh."

28. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
GMB (without the drinking)!! If you could call him a historical figure. He certainly liked his history.

29. What is your greatest extravagance?
Books. Bears. Gifts. Nice furnishings for my Most Treasured Possession.

30. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
Their age - I would roll it back.

31. What is your favorite occupation?
Pottering around at home.

32. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Connection of minds.

33. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Connection of minds.

34. How would you like to die?
In my sleep.

35. If you could chose what to come back as, what would it be?
I thought we answered that one! Definitely a cat. Or maybe C.J.

Mood: Kicking myself
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'Malaika' by Fadhili William

It's a jolly good thing we did do the Gadget Show broadband test - it was a catalyst for change. I didn't know all that much about the terms of Mum's broadband account (which I'm sharing) so when I said it was advertised on the ISP's site as 'up to 8 Mb', E said “we've both got the 512 Kb package, which means the broadband speed is as good as we can expect.”
“Oh,” I said, “I looked on the ISP's site and didn't realize they were selling it in different speeds - mea culpa.”

E got suspicious, rootled around, and announced that the packages have been changed and they don't sell different speeds any more - just different download limits. However, Mum (and E) are still stuck on the old 512 Kb packages. Mum is paying £30 a month for hers... which means she could have been getting 'up to 8 Mb' speeds and a capacious download limit of 30 GB for that price - but as far as I'm aware, they didn't tell her.

You know, there's something about that that's just not honest!

We decided to 'downgrade' to a 2 GB package, which will save Mum £10 a month. If we need more, we will get extra blocks if we pay... but it's not as expensive as paying £10 a month for a download capacity we're not using.

I decided to check my dial-up account, which I only keep now for the email address. It's a very old, very cheap account, and I didn't think I could do better, but it turns out there's a still cheaper option by the same ISP, with the added bonus of a limited amount of free internet surf time, which I wasn't getting with the old account.

I don't know who I'm most annoyed with - the ISP for not keeping us abreast of these account changes, or myself for not keeping an eagle eye on them.

I've put in account change requests for both the broadband and dial-up accounts. Mum was thinking of switching to a different ISP but they have a very bad press on the ISP Review UK site at the moment. We've been with our current ISP for years and I don't remember anything but the smallest and most temporary of glitches. Hopefully it will stay that way! And maybe we'll see our broadband speeds improve - fingers crossed.

My ISP moves fast - I put in my bid to change the dial-up account last night, and today I got a message to say it will change at the end of my monthly billing period to the new account. Talk about speedy.

Being in the mood all of a sudden to save money, I rushed into my telephone account and cancelled the Caller Display at my house... I'm not even there to use it. The fax machine is sitting here in Mum's house now.

Life is so..... complicated!!! Full of fidgety little things you forget to monitor! And I'm quite sure that's what 'they' are counting on. Sigh.

Mood: No different
Listening to: Nothing

Britain's broadband speeds are well behind the rest of Europe's, and the advertising is generally misleading - it's said that nobody gets anything like the speeds they're offered. Big Sister and I have just taken part in the broadband speed test by the Gadget Show on Five. We got the following results:

Download speed (mine) 487 kbps.
Download speed (sister's) 490 kbps.
Upload speed (mine) 17 kbps.

We're on the 512kB package anyway, it seems - actually we've been thrown into confusion about that and are trying to find out just what it is we're paying for, as it seems things have changed since we signed up - we're now expecting 'up to 8 Mb' (we are??) but there are other conditions we didn't know about. Meanwhile I'm not sure if that upload speed is par for the course?

Mood: Avoiding the X Factor on TV downstairs
Listening to: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'

Pieces of Eight meme (edited) pinched from Blue Moon Girl:

8 Things I Am Passionate About
1. For humanity to chill out more
2. Passion? What's that?

8 Things I Say Often
1. Blut
2. Bleep!
3. Drattles
4. Hello, wotchoo bin doing? (to Sharky)
5. D'yoo want some food? (to Sharky)
6. Don't DO that!
7. What I was going to say was...
8. Nooooooooooooooo! (first thing in the morning)

8 Books I’ve Read Recently
1. George Mackay Brown: The Life by Maggie Fergusson
2. Stars of the New Curfew by Ben Okri
3. Starship Voyager: Caretaker by L.A. Graf
4. The Tales of Olga da Polga by Michael Bond
5. The Saint of Dragons by Jason Hightman
6. Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth by Ted Hughes
7. The Blue Lion by Robert Lynd
8. Joys of Single Blessedness by George Ade

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over
1. The Lion Sleeps Tonight / Wimoweh (any version) - ANIMATED CLIP
2. Kingston Town by UB40 - CLIP
3. Karma Chameleon by Culture Club - CLIP
4. Souvenir by OMD - CLIP
5. Enola Gay by OMD - CLIP
6. Dream a Lie by UB40 - CLIP
7. Mr Bassman (especially as performed by the Muppets) - MUPPETS CLIP
8. Going Home by Runrig (wot - no clip??)

Mood: Brighter than earlier, but with a headache
Listening to: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'

I was telling Snoskred that I don't visit video sites - not for any particular reason; just because I'm usually wasting my time in other ways! My sister seems to enjoy rootling around in YouTube, though, and occasionally sends us links to the clips she finds.

Tonight she found some old favourites of ours - Mahnahmahnah by the Muppet Show, Hugga Wugga, and Halfway Down the Stairs.

That got me scratching around in the archives when I should have been finishing a letter to a penpal, and I got my own back by sending her the clip for The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

That song's an old favourite of mine, ever since I was seven...

In the jungle, the mighty jungle,
The lion sleeps tonight
In the jungle, the quiet jungle,
The lion sleeps tonight
Ooooooo wimoweh, wimoweh...

Actually there's a Wikipedia entry saying 'wimoweh' was a mishearing of 'uyimbube' which means 'you're a lion'.

I've watched it three or four times already. Must turn off the computer and get some sleep.

Hush, my darling, don't fear, my darling,
The lion sleeps tonight
Hush, my darling, don't fear, my darling,
The lion sleeps tonight

Ooooooooooooooo wimoweh, wimoweh!
Ooooooooooooooo! Wimoweh!
Ooooooooooooooo, wimoweh
Ooooooooooooooo! Wimoweh!

Now you know what I used to listen to in my mispent youth, every time I fired up that creaky old record player.

Mood: Fine
Listening to: Horrible tinnitus and house rushings

I've known from a child that Mum could be inconsistent - it was confusing but I eventually learned that most people swither about a lot of things. Possibly the aspect that most confused me was the confidence and determination with which Mum would state a preference which was later changed.

Actually it still confuses me.

For instance, we decided to get a new lino for my hall (house to be rented out). My sister said "why not a carpet?"
"Oh yes, we could get a carpet for a change, it might be more comfortable," I said, but Mum came up with all sorts of reasons why I should stick with lino.

When we discovered lino was not much cheaper, she said a carpet would be the sensible buy. I had only just told her I disliked all the carpets but had seen a nice lino, so I was a bit taken aback. All that had just been brushed aside. I protested that the lino would probably last longer than a cheap pale carpet which had had mud tramped into it by tenants and visitors on wet days.

"Oh yes, you're right," she said.

We went to the warehouse and I turned towards the lino section, thinking I had won the battle... but Mum pointed at a carpet and said "how about this? It doesn't cost much more than the linos and it's a Stainsomethingorover - should be easy to clean."

The shop manager told us we would need underlay as well, which would jack the price up... Suddenly we were looking at the linos again - and lino is what we bought.

Having told this story, I'm beginning to wonder if she's really so contradictory, or it's just something about me that loses the plot every so often - there's such a clear pattern here. Doubtless we are talking loudly about which would last the longest, but ultimately we are being led by price.

Well, on another occasion we went shopping for a double duvet cover for my new double bed (in the house to be rented out). I found one I quite liked - mostly white with panels of pink flowers. They weren't too large or too close together, so it was reasonably tasteful. I showed it to Mum, and she looked as horrorstruck as though I'd offered her a Disney Princess or Hello Kitty duvet set.

"You can't get that... what if a couple looks at the house? A fellow won't want to sleep in it with those pink flowers."

Well, let's see... the double bedroom has a pink carpet, bright floral curtains and a pale pink lightshade. The single bedroom also has a pink carpet; the curtains are cream with a pleasant floral print - I'll point out that Mum found that set. The bathroom has bright floral wallpaper and silver lino... I wasn't sure what difference one more 'girly' item would make, especially as it was mostly white anyway.

We moved on without buying anything.

In the very next place (a charity shop), Mum found a double duvet set for something like £4. It was a strong bubblegum pink all over with large yellow daisies.

"We'll get THIS, shall we?" she said brightly, confident I'd love it.

I just nodded - it seemed the easiest way out.

---

Later on I got another duvet set with matching curtains... fresh creamy white with large wobbly pink flowers on the lower half. The curtains are lighter and longer than my old floral 'cottage garden' curtains. It sounds girly, I know, but looks quite sophisticated. I'll hide the bubblegum pink duvet set at the back of the airing cupboard for spares - the Scaly Tenants can use it if they like...

I'm beginning to wonder if these tenants will ever actually exist, outside of my imagination.