Monday, March 30, 2009

It's my birthday!

My husband's birthday was on Saturday so we had a meal out yesterday with the family to celebrate.

Today, I'm doing as little as possible. I plan to eat food I haven't cooked and watch Serenity, if we can find the DVD.

Hope you're all having a good day!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

My superpowers

Bevie has suggested writing a weekly serial about superheroes - with us as the heroes. To that end, I've designed my own superhero picture using HeroMachine version 2.5.



Clearly, Fairy Hedgehog has the power to walk barefoot on snow without getting frostbite. She also has other strange magical powers that will be revealed as the story progresses. (Isn't that a great cop-out so that she can have whatever powers she needs for the plot to work?)

I really like her but she strikes me as being more of a witch than a superhero. Can witches be superheroes? I'm not entirely sure about that so I designed a more traditional superhero:



This was purely out of intellectual curiosity about superpowers and not in any way because I liked playing with the HeroMachine. Now I'm wondering which one will appeal to more people. I'd do a poll if I had any idea how to.

I do have my own real life superpowers, you know. I have the Mum powers of eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head and always-being-right but my favourite superpower is the power of reading. I was thinking the other day that although I would absolutely love the power to fly, if I had to trade in reading to be able to fly I'm not at all sure that I would. Reading takes me to much stranger and more interesting places than I could ever get by flying (especially when I read anything written by Whirl). I'll settle for flying in my dreams. (Is that a superpower?)

I recently read on rhcrayon that
My friend "e" once told me that her job hostessing gave her a new superpower: she can walk into any restaurant today and know how long the wait will be.
That's a superpower that would never have occurred to me.

I'd love to know if any of you are going to make your own superheroes and also to hear about any superpowers that you already have.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Gnome army alert

I know it's late but I couldn't resist showing you this Mother's Day card from one of my sons. (I did ask his permission first.)

front of card

inside right
inside left

You have been warned. Get your anti-gnome armour now, before it's too late.

Accolade

I have just come second in McKoala's competition to write a scene where Robin and Whirl go on a date.
FH was a close second, for clarity and use of cow.

Marks for clarity are of course good but I was overwhelmed to gain points for use of cow. Never before have I received this accolade and that is why I wanted to share it with you now.

What's the weirdest compliment you've ever had?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

It's Spring!


I was in a short sleeved t-shirt today, sucking up the sun's rays. Then I had a thought that made me smile. I tried not to catch people's eyes as I walked past them in case they thought I was amused at them.

The thought started with the idea that I was topping up my vitamin D. I had this image of my body making the vitamin in response to the sunlight and I thought "I'm photosynthesising". It's not really funny but for some reason it made me smile.

A sense of humour is a funny thing. We all see it so differently. My Beloved is capable of making jokes that no one gets but him and maybe I'm not as different as I think.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Pretty up your comments

If you want to use bold and italics in your comments, or to add a link, you don't need to know html. All you need to do is:

Download Firefox (if you're not already using it).
Download Write Area.

When you want to comment on a post, right click on the comment area and choose 'Edit in a Write Area' from the menu. You will get a new box that gives you lots of little formatting buttons that you use the same way as the ones in Blogger. When you've finished your comment, click 'Save' and the html is written into the comment box for you.

You can't use colours or any other html that Blogger doesn't allow but you can do bold, italic and links. I found this addon through Pharyngula.

Today...

...is International Women's Day.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Chat

I have added a chat room (from EveryWhereChat) here. Just click on the link, scroll down, change "guest" to your nickname and click "enter".

We'll need to email each other to find out when we can chat. I may not keep it if no one uses it or if spammers abuse it but I thought we might give it a go.

If you can't see it, you need to download and install Java.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Other Earths


Earthlike planets may not be as uncommon as we always thought, according to Sentient Developments. I didn't know that one had already been found only 20 light years away. It's still too far to go for a visit but as interstellar distances go I suppose that counts as next door.

I'm not sure if this is good news for science fiction writers or not. Given that we're writing fiction maybe the state of the real universe isn't too important. I like to think that it's based on science though. Now all we need is to perfect that faster than light travel and we'll be sorted.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

That's so gay!

The word "gay" was intended to be a non-pejorative word for a homosexual person but in any school playground you can hear the phrase "That's so gay!" as a term of disparagement. Now, over at I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I read? someone has come up with a different definition of the word "gay".
if it's, like, good, good, good fashion-level, design-level stuff, where it's on a higher level than the average commercial design stuff, it's, like, gay people that do that. I think that should be said as a compliment. Like, 'Dude, that's so good it's almost . . . gay.'"

You really should read the original: it's very funny. Why not use one stereotype (gay fashion designers) to oust a more pernicious stereotype? Although I don't think it's so much stereotyping that makes kids use "gay" to mean "bad". I think there is a lot of nervousness about sexuality and a fear of being taken to be part of an oppressed minority.

Will it make a difference if we all start saying things like, "That's a great painting. It's really gay!"? I think it might. Words are hugely powerful and we can make a difference. So, if you think this post is any good, tell me it's gay!

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Not PG-rated

If you have a robust sense of humour, you might enjoy the latest post on All The Good Ones Were Taken. The title The Considerate Graffiteur may give you a clue to the subject matter.

It's the first thing I've read today that had me laughing out loud.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Don't lose your comments

You know how annoying it is when you're writing a comment on a blog and something falls over and you lose everything you've written. Or even worse, you're filling out a form online and it all suddenly disappears. Well, I've found the answer but only if you're using Firefox. (Firefox is much more secure than Internet Explorer and has lots of cool addons. You can download it here.)

It's an addon called Lazarus.

So you need never lose a comment ever again. Unless you want to.
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