Posting By E-mail?

Now there's an option I hadn't considered before now. Again, my concern is going to be about the formatting.

I guess there's only one way to find out how it looks!

One More

This is the last of the test posts. Promise.

Well, it's the last of the test posts for now. If this doesn't work how I want it's either back to copy & paste or finally choose between Blogger and WordPress!

Dimmed

As the nice people at Google were kind enough to bring out an update for the Android Blogger app I ought to test it out.

It's nice having dimmer switches for the lounge lights. Subdued lighting while watching a movie is a good thing. I remember, a long time ago, there was a little boy whose mind was completely blown when he first encountered dimmer switches. That such a thing might be possible, that someone had thought of it and that it was in homes. That it was in people's homes!

And now the little boy has grown up. He lives in a house with dimmer switches. He watches movies on a computer he can carry around and has a telephone that's a small computer itself. Using that telephone, he can write in a diary that's stored somewhere he can get at it from anywhere and choose whether to let no-one else read it or to let everyone else read it. Everyone. Writing in the third person, on a telephone, by the light of a dimmer-switched bulb. Crazy.

Holding My Hands Up

Yes. Mmmm. I have a confession to make.

That picture in the previous post? Pretend it's not there please. Actually, just disregard the whole post.

I can't speak to the road to Hell (although some may say different) but the last couple of days of October were filled with good intentions. And the last day was also filled with an absolutely stinking head cold. I tried, I really did, but I could only just get my head around words enough to manage at work - there was just no chance that I was going to be able to generate any kind of invention beyond that.

So I'll give up for another year. Good luck to everyone who has the creativity to press on with NaNoWriMo, whether they reach the end or not. Kudos.

Words are tricky things, sometimes. I don't think that people have a limitless supply of them in a set period of time. You have to let your Word Store get new stock. I guess that usually happens when we're asleep (don't ask about people who talk in their sleep - that blows the whole analogy out of the water) but maybe not so quickly when we're poorly. Fingers crossed that over the next few days my restocking will get quicker again.

2nd Time Lucky

Six years after my first attempt, I think I'm going for it again...

 

Wish me luck. There might not be many words here in November. I have limits! I'll keep you posted, though.

It's been a long time since I rock & rolled...

Yesterday evening was lovely. Out for a meal  with my Lovely Lady and then to the movies to watch Celebration Day. 

Call it a happiness hangover maybe but today has been a strange one. When one is working for a living one expects some days to be more stressful than others but I'm not talking about stress, necessarily. It's just been kinda...weird. There's been a lot more bustle out in the square than usual for one thing, and I certainly didn't expect to spend part of the evening having an e-mail conversation with a house-hunting ex-DJ.

So tomorrow is Friday and it'll be a week until the blessed relief of payday. Of course, I have to get through the weekend to get there but I'll pull my big boy pants on, square my shoulders and cope like a man (i.e. whinging and complaining). I've spectacularly failed to do any housework at all this week, aside from running the vacuum cleaner round quickly, so I'll have plenty to keep me busy.

I'm sat here just waiting for the computer keyboard to come up with something that I can work more Led Zeppelin lyrics into. I guess it's not going to happen, unless I'm less than subtle about it, though.

"If my wings should fail me, Lord, please meet me with another pair."

As I have another alarm call to answer in the morning, I'd better stop tapping away. The typing is starting to fail me and what little inspiration I sat down with has run as dry as a very, very dry thing.

Fingers Crossed...

...but I think I may just have fixed my Blogger template. What a palaver!

For The Day That's In It

Today is, apparently, World Mental Health Day. It's crazy that I didn't know that.

Okay, we've got that out of the way.

I just nearly typed "people fortunate enough to have good mental health need to cop the fuck on", but it's not about that. It's about realising things like depression affect more than 350 million people of all ages, and in some countries fewer than 10% of those who need it receive treatment. We're not talking about moodiness here, or that dude at work who's as crabby as hell in the mornings before he's had three coffees, I'm talkng about The Black Dog - real, clinical depression. The sort of thing that, if left unaddressed, has the power to turn bright, charming, intelligent people into uncommunicative agoraphobes. 

Now, if you're sat there muttering under your breath "They should pull themselves together. In my day etc etc" then I was wrong earlier - you do need to cop the fuck on. Depression isn't a lifestyle choice and it's not something that people can always overcome without medical help. Even with help, it may be something that's "managed" rather than "cured". Unfortunately, even reaching out for that help still carries a certain amount of stigma. 

Do yourselves a favour, people. Look after yourselves. Yes, mens sana in corpore sano by all means but be aware and be understanding. Don't be too hard on yourself. Sometimes the most grown-up thing you can do is ask for help when you need it. 

Missed!

I have the feeling that there's something I was going to say here. Can't for the life of me think what, though.

If it were earlier I could maybe sit here and waffle on in the hope that whatever-it-was would come back to me. As it's now pushing midnight I probably shouldn't be doing that now, though. More's the pity. This could be the moment when a great work of literature goes unstarted or a profound insight into the human state is missed.

Both of the above are unlikely, I'll grant you. But there's always the outside possibility that I might have typed something vaguely amusing. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

What??

It is, incidentally, entirely unacceptable that Blogger appears to have broken my template with no interference from me. Have they not noticed that I also have a blog at Wordpress? They haven't broken my template!

If I'd been messing around with the html coding then that would be fine - my own stupid fault, as it were. But I haven't and it ain't! Growl.

A Tale of H and S

It's funny - but not in the "ha-ha" sense of the word. When I'm at work I can usually keep going and going. It's only when I stop that things seems to seize up and it's happened again.

To use up the last of this year's holiday allowance I took Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off and I've struggled on all three days. I've been blah, I've been meh and I've been many other words ending in h as well. Especially sneezyh.

In between sneezing fits I've been enjoying my cable internet. Fat enough for me to comfortably stream video even while my significant otter is sett up working from "home". See what I did there?

As it's a cable connection, it comes with capability for a landline. This is something that I haven't had since I moved over here. I shelled out for a home telephone today and I'm hoping that it'll help to make up for the frankly crappy mobile phone signal I get here. Whether I'll be able to work out call transfers while I'm at the house is an open question.

It's also a question for tomorrow. I'm sleepy and a little shivery, and I'll like to snuggled up in bed now. I'd also like the s key on this laptop to start working properly again. Thanks very much.

Lesson Learned

I did something exceptionally stupid yesterday. I locked myself out.

It's not the end of the world, I know but even so. The least offensive word that sprang to mind was "gah". I had a wander around some of the local businesses to try to find a ladder, as the bedroom windows were open. Perhaps mercifully, no-one had one. I don't have the greatest head for heights and climbing from a ladder through a window might have posed a few gravity-related problems.

In the end, I bowed to the inevitable and called a locksmith. Thanks to the young fellow at the Foam Services office who had a Yellow Pages. Mind you, I think they call it "Golden Pages" over here!

Thanks also to the young guy from Maclock who was with me within half an hour and was very sympathetic and friendly, while totally professional and efficient. 30 seconds and I was back in the house. Luckily, I had the cash in my wallet to pay him.

Lesson learned, then. I didn't really want to have to pay €90 for that kind of lesson but I guess it could have been worse!

Define it...

This evening, I'd like to briefly illustrate the concept of irony for you.

I used to treat my previous house almost as a bedsit. I'd live in the bedroom and really only use the lounge for storing things in. Oh, and for ironing in. I digress.

My beautiful new home has a quirk all of its own in that the mobile signal from my provider is non-existant in most of the house. As my internet connection is via a 3G dongle this poses challenges.

The only place in the entire house that I can get a stable enough signal to be able to connect to the internet (until my fixed broadband is installed next week) is in the bedroom.

Irony. Thank you.

Packing

I've been making lists and organising things in my head but tomorrow I suppose I ought to start packing.

Have I mentioned that I'm moving?

It feels a little odd, to be honest. As strange as it may sound, this is the first place I've ever lived alone. Yes, I've had a pretty regular house guest but basically I live by myself. Moving from one place to another under these circumstances is a new experience for me.

I've built a lot of memories in this little house over the last three years. Practically all of the good ones involve being here with my Pretty Lady. In fact scratch the "practically" from that last sentence. I've also got some less good memories of the place, most of which involve coming home from work (or waking up) to find pools of rain from where the house wasn't entirely weatherproof. Oh, and not being able to keep the place warm in winter because of the stone floors. Anyway.

So I can move in next Tuesday. That's ideal in a lot of ways as it's payday - if there's anything I need to pick up for the house I'll have the moolah to do so. I'm very excited actually. It's a lovely quiet area. Down a very narrow lane (which will take a little negotiating with the car!) you come to two rows of terraced houses and mine is an end terrace. And the view from the top of the lane is wonderful...

 

Back within earshot of the bells!

Olympians

BBC Sport - Ennis, Rutherford and Farah light up London 2012 Olympics for Great Britain

"Great Britain claimed six gold medals and a silver on Day Eight of the London Games to enjoy their most successful day at an Olympics in 104 years."

I've lived through some days that'll be written in the history books. Today was one that'll go into the sporting history books.

The first Olympics I can remember was Munich '72. The terrific sporting achievements there are usually overshadowed in memory by the violent deaths of 17 people, but I'm slightly ashamed to say that my six-year old self was more interested in the games themselves. 

I remember Mark Spitz, Olga Korbut, but most all Mary Peters who won the hearts of the Bavarian crowd, a gold medal and brought a smile to the face of Belfast for a while.

The Olympic Games have held a special place in my heart ever since.

Foxed

It's far too late to be up typing this, as I have work tomorrow, but I'm extremely vexed and need to get it out of my system.

Basically, I'm annoyed with Firefox and the way it refuses to play with this extension I use to blog. Using the extension, Scribefire, in Chrome as I am now, I get asked to manually enter login and password details to publish to my backup blog at Wordpress. In Firefox, the same extension redirects me to Wordpress, I click on a button to authorise the extension and I get a message saying that I've entering a "bad login/pass combination".

Given the way that Firefox now takes a noticeably longer time to load pages, especially those with Flash content, this makes me think that I might be using Chrome for personal purposes for a while. I'm still obliged to use Firefox for work so I can keep an eye it.

This saddens me, to be honest. I've bought into Google wholesale for Calendar, e-mail etc but I like the idea of Open-Source software and I'd love it if Firefox was still the best, as it used to be. At the moment, it's not, though.

November Calls...

We lose people as life goes on. It's just the way that it is. We're never quite ready for the jolt, the feeling of sudden emptiness when a loved one passes away and we set about living with the hole in our life.

I say "loved one", really meaning someone close, like a close friend, family member or our significant other. Love casts a wider net than that, though. If we can assume that someone who has made a lasting impact on our lives, without whom we wouldn't be the same, is someone that we can love, then I mourn for a man that I loved.

Last Monday saw the passing of a man who has been widly hailed as one of the most talented musicians that ever graced our world. Jon Lord was a rare talent as a keyboard player and as a composer. Rock, blues and the world of contemporary classical music have lost a giant, whose like we are unlikely to see again. 

Possibly more importantly, everyone who had the pleasure to meet him agreed that he was intelligent, erudite and a gentleman. The world is a poorer place without him in it. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Duplication of Content

So I didn't delete the previous post. Sue me.

One thing about browsing the internet is that one tends to stumble upon horror stories about websites and tools that one uses regularly. For example, I read something this morning about Blogger randomly and accidentally deleting people's blogs. Gulp. I may not be here as much as I intend to be but the thought that Twirling might disappear is slightly unnerving.

With that in mind I signed up for a free Wordpress account and imported everything over to it. I plan to run it as a back-up for Twirling here, as I have a clever little blog posting tool that'll ask me if I want to post elsewhere when I click to publish.

I know that a lot of people swear by Wordpress but I'm not convinced. I'm aware that this is my OCD rising to the fore, but I can't get a template over there that'll indent the beginnings of paragraphs, unless I pay for it. Yes, it has some nice features but I want my paragraphs indented!

If any of you good people are Wordpress experts and have any tips, I'd be glad to hear them.

For the time being this site is still the primary one. I'll let you know if it changes.

Playing with Chrome

Pay no attention - I'm just playing with an blogging extension to Google's Chrome browser.

If you're lucky enough to see this post then either you've been very quick, in which case "well done", or you subscribe to my blog's feed, in which case "thank you"!

Paragraph.

Paragraphs have to be indented, of course!

Reichstag