little russians

Another coffee related post today, this one showing a few little people going about their business in Russia. The full set of these pictures from Очень живой журнал или Блог в стиле дзуйхицу are entertaining and I spent amused minutes browsing through them. My original source for this involved...

chocolate and...

vodka.

Tag: russia, chocolate, дзуйхицу

cloud

How sweet to be a cloud, floating in the blue.

Lying awake, late the other night
Heard above me a trembling,
I looked up, it was a little cloud,
From which a gold string was dangling;
You know, I gave the string a little pull,
Just to see what was on the other end.

Just then a voice came down to me, says,
"Hey, now, don't you want to be my friend,
And float with me to distant lands,
wondrous and fair;
Float with me to distant lands wondrous and fair?
You see I'm just a happy little cloud,
I laugh and float and sing my song,
But the other clouds don't like me none.
They say I am behaving very wrong.
You see a cloud's supposed to be sad,
To cry and weep and tear its hair and all,
And don't matter how hard I try,
I can't get the first little tear to fall."

And float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
Float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;

Incredible String Band

latte

Sitting down for a few minutes today with a grande skinny latte, I flicked into rashbre central and noticed the ego measure had plummeted to 3000 (!)

What could I do, but quickly re-run the counter, just to prove to myself that the original count was not a mistake.

And how pointless is that!

However, what was more interesting was spotting some of the references that google found to old comments which I have left sprinkled around the internet. I'm sure we all forget the varied trips into other peoples' worlds and lives and the smiling exchanges that take place. I found a rather strange debate about Maya Gold chocolate, which I'd entered and then had others debating the merits of different chocolates.

I shall stay away from the ego dial now. What is it the police say, "Stand Away!"?

thrills

Well it is Valentine's Day.

ego

Today's amusing entry is the googlometer ego dial. Just type in your name and blog and let it calculate your poptastic ego rating. Or click here to see it in action!

ramen

Dinner by Melanie tonight, inspired by Wagamama's. The 'behind the scenes' secret Wagamama sauce recipe was on the delicious salad and then a very enjoyable chili beef ramen. We didn't really start eating until around 10pm, and the party broke up at around 2am on Sunday, when a taxi came to pick us up.

wet

Spent part of the afternoon mopping water from the floor caused by a broken washing machine. Looks like the machine is dead and will need to be replaced. Groan.

ping

07:30 drove to the hotel to meet for breakfast. Then into the day, although I spent quite a lot of time sitting in varied locations as diverse as a ballroom, lounge, bar and stairwell whilst on my mobile phone.

Into my car, during which I was supposed to have another call with someone from India, but they didn;t show up. By the time I got home it was getting dark, I had three or four minutes to plug in my failing phone and restart my laptop. Then as I sat down there was a ping and the light bulb in the room broke. I took the call sitting in the dark, illuminated by the PC screen.

blurb

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I'm going to get going on the NaNo novel I started a few months ago. It needs a big edit and will then be ready for me to figure out how to get it bookified.

I've just spotted blurb, which is a way to get a blog turned into a book. Not sure that I want to do this, but the idea is quite interesting. As they say,"Join the blurberati".

Thursday Thirteen (V11.0)

1. Didn't get home this evening until around 10pm;
2. Probably spent at least 5 hours on the phone today; last few calls were New York, Stockholm, Paris and Sydney.
3. Considered today to be one of the sunniest days I've experienced in the UK so far this year;
4. Talked to a Swedish (not Danish) friend today who said she'dwalked past the Danish embassy a couple of days ago but been very self conscious that she is quite tall and blonde;
5. Discovered this afternoon that I have a breakfast meeting tomorrow in a hotel, which I didn't know about;
6. Need to start the major edit of my Nanowrimo book; Enough time has passed now to give me a perspective on what I wrote;
7. Starting to wonder what happens to my itunes downloads if I change another couple of computers, iTunes sets a limit on the number of computers its tunes can be played upon;
8. Using the new Windows IE7 on my thinkpad; it looks a bit schizophrenic;
9. Windows announced my email archive was full today; I had to spend half an hour archiving from the full archive to another one; another time sink;
10. Julie just told me she is getting lots of fan mail from her writing;
11. Started Christina Notts web site; it needs a lot of work; abandoned the first one in iWeb and now using Blogger;
12. Tuesday was another day to don a radio mic; probably the fifth time within the last month;
13. I'm hungry.
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. Leanne's Thirteen!
2. Ivory Frog's Thirteen!
3. Running 2k's Thirteen!
4. Uisce's Thirteen
5. Chickadee's Thirteen!
6. Judy's Thirteen!
7. Raehan's Thirteen!
8. Lunchtruck's Thirteen!
9. Janne's Thirteen!
X. (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get Leanne's Thursday Thirteen code here!
Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! Leave your link as a comment and I will link to you and you can continue the chain!

Tag: Thursday Thirteen

dawn

The last few days, I've been getting up early and driving around in the dark. This morning, I was on the last part of the journey when I suddenly realised it was getting light. One snap later through the window of the car and I got this. My phone has distorted the colours somewhat, but the end result is a good reminder of the early signs of the changing season.

iWeb Comments

Trying to use the new Apple iWeb software to create the already mentioned Christina Nott site, I ran into a few basic problems. One - no ability to add comments ; Two- no obvious sidebar capability.

So the rather clean lines of the current prototype site are nice enough but not really very functional. I ran into a facility to add comments called (not surprisingly) iComment.

iComment is an application written by Chad Brantly. It works with the commenting service I already use, Haloscan.

Basically, When you set up your blog in iWeb, you insert some control text into the page. Then, run the iWeb blog through iComment, and it converts the special text into links and trackbacks compatible with Haloscan.

No simple solution for the sidebar, though. I have a feeling that Christina will be moving to Blogger.