April Fool?

OK, so I just woke up about 30 mins ago – not had enough coffee or ciggies yet, but this message I get from Easynews.com confuses me:

Sounds OK, yes? I use Easy as a fill server – it’s about £6 a month – Giganews is my main news server – has an unlimited plan. Easynews is about 30GB per month, but it rolls over – I have almost 500GB banked – Giganews is THAT reliable. However, 10GB extra for nowt sounds good so I clicky.

Like I said, I can still taste the toothpaste, so maybe my brain can’t digest this yet, but doesn’t sound like much of a steal. Please tell me, is this some sort of April Fool? I used to love April Fool. When I was fucking SEVEN! There was nothing funnier than running into my parents bedroom, telling them my sister was dead. Every year. What? It was funny for me anyway. If this is an April Fool it will sort of backfire as I’ll be cancelling my account - I don’t appreciate humour where my money is concerned, the amount I have is laughable on it’s own.

I AM NOT CRAZY

For the record, I like to watch shows such as Destination Truth, MonsterQuest, Ghost Hunters and Mystery Quest. I also watch car-wreck shows such as Paranormal state, Paranormal Cops and Ghost Lab. I am quite sceptical, but love the idea of cryptids and would love to be convinced. I’m not, but would love to be.
I also think there’s something paranormal going on in a lot of ghost sightings/haunted places. I’d love to see some proof, I haven’t, but I’d love to.
However, I do object to being grouped under the “paranormal” umbrella, when you include all those Americans who believe in UFOs. I say Americans because, besides David Icke, they are the worst offenders. Yes, they offend me. OK, I concede they have some pretty weird videos of strange things in the sky, which warrants further investigation. But how on earth do you come up with these stories of reptilians and greys, etc? I mean, seriously? The X-Files was great sci-fi, but it was just that: fiction. When I was younger, before the interwebs,  I used to read a magazine on the paranormal, and even back then resented the inclusion of these stories. At least bigfoot and ghost stories have blurry photos to back it up (somewhat). What do they have of aliens? Drawings and bad photoshopping. ffs.
So in summary, I might watch some programming that mainstream science finds questionable, but at least I don’t believe there’s a colony of grey/reptilian/human clones living underground that fly around, abducting red-necks, cutting out cow’s arseholes with “lasers” and infiltrating the world government. K? k.

Oh, and FYI - mediums are liars.

What a crap week that was

Title says it all really. Another boring week in a continuous stream of boring weeks. Highlight of the week – eye test on Monday. My opticians, D&A, were recently bought by the Boots chain, and since they already had a store in Bolton they closed my D&A branch. Luckily, the same optician I’ve visited for the last 10 years, Rachel, transferred. I’m not a fan of change – I’m a bit odd like that. This is my first eye test since the MS diagnosis – I was given a much more thorough exam than I’ve had before. Lots of machinery involved, including digital imaging of my eye, which showed a very healthy optic nerve – nothing to worry about.
My new glasses should be ready Monday or Tuesday – so there’s next week’s highlight sorted.
The picture to the right are the frames I ordered as my main pair. I got a second pair free, but couldn’t afford to get slimmer lenses so had to get standard metal frames, similar to my present ones, but black rather than gold.
Anything else good last week? nah. TV was a bit light – got a few episodes to watch still, 24 and FlashForward, and the return of Supernatural.  I spent the week watching crap on Hulu, and playing Lord of Ultima. If you have access to Hulu, check out this – a fantastic story about Yellowstone’s grizzlies. Watched it this morning and was glued to the screen – stunning animals. The picture to the left is Brutus, Casey’s “pal”, best man at his wedding – Casey, the presenter, employs Brutus to give us up-close examples of grizzly behaviours he shows us in the wild.
OK, fed up of typing now, ttfn.

Tourettes (I am going to hell)

If there was ever any doubt over which way I’ll go when my number is up, pissing myself watching Tourettes: I Swear I Can’t Help It on BBC iPlayer just sealed my fate.
I know it’s a serious neurological condition, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but I did … a lot. Maybe it has something to do with Bo Selecta doing a parody of the guy (John) in an earlier documentary, but replacing him with Gareth Gates.

See, not my fault. Bo Selecta made me laugh at it!

“MOBY DICK!”

The Return of FlashForward

All hail, for it has returned!

Yes, Wednesday night’s little catch-up, “What did you see?” was followed last night by a double dose of ABC’s fantastic drama series, FlashForward. I did mention the catch-up yesterday, but neglected to look forward one day to see Thursday’s listings, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this double episode this morning.
I won’t go spoiling you, I’m not mean. I know Five will be showing it soon in the UK, before the hiatus they were only a week behind the US, so watch out for the return! There’s no point watching “What did you see?” unless you totally forgot everything that happened before Christmas. Even my bad memory still clung on to the events :) So be prepared for a few answers, a few revelations, and yet more unanswered questions. Yay!

My New Phone

Oh yes. Sexy has arrived. My HTC HD2 arrived late yesterday.
I would have blogged about it yesterday, but I was too busy playing with it :) It’s the latest in my love affair with HTC phones, dating back to my first O2 XDA. I love gadgets in general, and the great thing about PDA’s is they are also useful, unlike the USB drink warmer I bought :P
I’ve not had a new PDA for a number of years now – the last one was the XDA Orbit. This phone is so much more advanced it makes my Orbit look like a dinosaur. My last 2 phones have been regular Nokia handsets – nothing fancy. But I have a lot of difficulty with the buttons, so much so that I switched to my old Orbit as the on-screen keypad is LARGE. However, a bath in warm coffee and a 4 year old battery has resulted in a dodgy phone, so I gave in to temptation and got the HD2. Had to get a 2 year contract in order to get it free, but it’s no biggie – I’m in lurve.
I hope the hackers manage to cook a Windows Mobile 7 ROM for this when WM7 comes out at Christmas – it’s just been announced that there will be no free upgrade, even though the HD2 has excellent specs (1Ghz processor!)
OK – off to install Bejewelled 2 on it – hope it works! ttfn

Another Makeover?

Well, I’m sat here watching really bad Steven Seagal films (The Foreigner anyone?) waiting for my new phone to arrive, and thought “Hey, I know. I’ll bugger about with my blog template … again!”

Just realised I’ve not grabbed last night’s Destination Truth so I’m off to do that. ttfn

Intentional Typo

Had to share this from Shoeboxblog.

It’s funny ‘cos it’s true (I think that’s © Homer Simpson, not sure :))

Oh Joy! It’s NCIS Day!

When you’re stuck at home due to illness/disability, as I am, the small things in life get you excited. Having just pushed my 12 year old son out the door too school, I check my TV Rage listings to see what was on last night, and fire up my newsreader to snaffle them from usenet. Illegal? Prolly. Necessary? Oh yes!
And oh what a treat! NCIS, NCIS:LA, Southland and the much-waited-for return of FlashForward (though I note with dismay it’s only a special, not a proper episode. Prolly a catch-up since it’s been off since before Christmas).
<---- Look! It’s Ziva!!!
So, Whilst I wait for NewsbinPro to do it’s thing, I thought I’d update this to brag about it :)
Can’t be too smug though – I have to go out later to Harwood for my ‘script and some food, since the cupboard is pretty bare indeed.

Why Chrome is the Best Browser

If you’ve not tried Google’s Chrome Browser, then you are missing out, big time. For the last 5 years or so I have been a stalwart Firefox fan, since version 1.5 it’s always kicked the stuffing out of Internet Explorer. Last year I started playing with Google’s Chrome, but it’s lack of extensibility has always forced me back to Firefox. I’ve even played with Opera on my desktop, since it’s the only browser I use on my PDA, but again I like extensions – widgets do nowt for me.

Starting in January this year, version 4 of Chrome has support for extensions, and it’s now taken over as my main browser. The only thing it lacks is some form of proxy management so I can do away with Firefox for good. As it stands, I still need Firefox and FoxyProxy to access regional content as Chrome uses the system’s proxy settings, so whilst there is an extension called Proxy Switchy, it buggers up my email and newsreader so I tend not to use it.
The most useful thing for me, recently, has been the built-in page translation. I didn’t even know about this feature until it popped up. I don’t tend to spend time on foreign sites – if they can’t be arsed to learn English, I can’t be arsed reading them (by the way, arsed is in the dictionary – way to go). Anyhoo, I was looking for a certain thing, and it was on a Russian site. Bugger. Then after it loads, a little bar pops up at the top offering to translate it for me – score! I got what I wanted in a few clicks, without resorting to the old copy & paste into Google Translate.
So, get Chrome – you wont regret it.

Things I Learned Whilst Getting Lost: Part the First

If you insist on listening to your MP3 Player getting on a train (thus missing the garbled announcements of which stops your train will make) at least look at the trains destination on the board.

Turns out there are 2 ways to get to Southport from Salford Crescent – one goes through Bolton (the one I needed to get) the other goes via the Atherton line (the one I actually got). I’ve been catching the train to Southport to get home from Manchester Piccadilly for the last 6 years – apparently there’s one from Manchester Victoria which doesn’t go to Bolton, they both go through Salford Crescent, enter lost me somewhere on the Atherton Line.

How I got lost in Salford, Survived, Blogged it and lost it.

Once upon a time I went to Hope Hospital. I got lost on the way back and wrote a blog piece using Windows Live Writer. When generating tags it crashed, and it doesn’t save drafts by default, so all my humorous musings were lost. It had pictures too, and a map. I’ve turned draft saving on now, but lost the will to retype all that shite. The end.

Boring

Well, bored I suppose. No one reads this bloody thing anyway, but I am bored. Stayed up all day (with the odd power nap) in an attempt to turn my day around – got to be at Hope Hospital on Monday morning to see the MS specialist, so desperately need to get the sleep all day browse all night thing sorted. As luck woul have it, It’s almost midnight and I can’t sleep, exhausted as I am. I’ve watched all my telly stuff from the week (24, CSI x3 flavours, NCIS x 2 flavours, House, Criminal Minds, White Collar, Human Target & Southland), plus the documentary stuff like Ghost Hunters and MonsterQuest. I’ve filled time playing various Hidden Object games – about the only gaming I can do with one hand. I’ve surfed, tweeted and blogged, read email, replied, caught up with my RSS subscriptions, fed the cat, fed the hamster, showed the hamster to the cat, got bollocked. I’m bored.

This is my cat,

and this is the hamster.
See. Bored. ttfn

Makeover Day

Thanks to a tweet from DownloadSquad I discovered Google’s easy Template Editor. As the article says, it is ridiculously easy to use. I’ve not touched HTML or css in years since I had my own website about font software, so I took no offence in their comment regarding Blogger users being less “design-savvy”.
Nothing else to say, so ttfn.

GoogleReader Play hates me

Just got a tweet from Download Squad regarding Google’s new plaything – GoogleReader Play. Would love to play, but all I get is …

Gotta admit – I like the look – reminds me of Sublime Reader, a Chrome extension I use to view my subscriptions. Let’s hope it starts working … soon.

Google Streetview Zooms by my ‘hood

Gotta love this snapshot of my local shops…

They even swept by my hovel, looks as bad as I thought it would – though not as much litter in the garden – they must have visited not long after the annual warning letter from the council telling me to tidy my garden. Maybe that’s why they sent the letter? Ha. I’m onto them now, breach of tenancy agreement my arse.

Wednesday

I love Wednesdays. Double dose of NCIS. I’m not a hater of the new NCIS Los Angeles, I like it. Mr Cool J is, well … cool :). It's not a patch on the original NCIS, but it’s just a baby – I just hope it gets a chance to mature.
Other reasons to love Wednesdays? White Collar and Southland. I know these are all Tuesday night shows in their home country, but it’s Wednesday here in Blighty when they get aired.
I could do a post each day about TV – I tend to watch a lot. So watch out tomorrow for “Thursday” lol. CSI: NY and Criminal Minds. Just checked my schedule: Ghost Hunters is back! Loved the live last week with Josh Gates – was great to see the cast in the studio answering fan questions. Will be nice to get back to the regular format though – too much interruption for my liking. One thing I found out at a Sci-Fi/Buffy convention thing in Blackpool many years ago: I hate whacked out fangirls (and fanboys). It was a free ticket – I hate to waste stuff. Stop mocking me!!!
Speaking of Josh Gates, his SyFy show, Destination Truth, returns next week (17th March) – I can’t wait. Love it!

wb

Ha! Just found this blog I set up and kept updated briefly a while ago. Reminds me of getting a diary at Christmas with good intentions, and forgetting all about it after the holidays when back at school/college/uni/work. Yup, it’s happened more than once.

So. Here I am, buying a new diary, as it were. I actually bought a diary at Christmas to help organise my various hospital appointments, etc and to keep track of my son’s school holidays. I tried using my Nokia – failed – you need to keep it charged and turned on. My PDA has similar faults, but due to it’s bigger on-screen keypad I’m using it rather than the Nokia with it’s doll-sized keypad. So far so good. Except for falling asleep and missing my pain clinic appointment … hmm.

OK, that’ll do for the wb post. ttfn

Those hurting hands in 2005? after 2-3 years of various medications for Reynaud's Phenomenon , was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2008. gg