Look Left, Look Right

Look on the right, and you may notice something has changed. Seen it yet? You may have to scroll down a little. Yes, there. The box which says 'Go to a random post', with the words 'Take me there' in it? If you're feeling bored or adventurous, click the words 'Take me there'. Be careful, though. You might be taken to the deepest, darkest realms of The Week that Was.

I've put in on my other blog, but seeing as it has four posts (the statistics on my dashboard says five, but it lies) theres little point to it yet.

On the Zemanta toolbar thing that gives me pretty pictures and cool links to put in my blog, one of them said 'A young writer with too much to say'. Okay, I take the hint.

Zemanta

Image via CrunchBase

Third time lucky, eh? Blogger Buzz suggested what seemed to be a really cool application for Firefox. And from what I've seen, everyone seems to enjoy it and think it's the bee's knees. The application is called Zemanta.

If you knew what it does (or meant to do) you'd probably think 'Why had no-one thought of this earlier. This is genius!'. Imagine this scenario, one that I frequently face. You are writing away and you think 'I need something to jazz this post up a bit.' Perhaps an image here, a link there. Then you think, I will have to trawl through Creative Commons sites (such as Wikipedia) to find the content I want. Then go through the hassle of inserting it, or highlighting the word, and copy and pasting the link. No more, my friends. Zemanta does this for you. I finds the stuff you want and then with just one click it inserts it.

That's the idea anyway. So far I've had limited success. First, the images only go on the right side of the text. Second, you can't preview when Zemanta is activated. Third, if you spell check with Zemanta stuff, everything goes crazy. I'm liking the italics today. Then you get scripting errors. And on my last attempt I managed to select and dump just about everything Zemanta had to offer, wanted or not, onto my blog. Some of this may be the fault of blogger. My dedicated readers (how snobby does that sound? Dedicated readers) will know of my love-hate relationship with blogger. Some of the fault may lie at my doorstep. It wasn't Zemanta's fault that I highlighted and dumped everything, it was doing what I told it to do.

So the jury is still out on Zemanta

Trend Setter

After updating the layout of my page, 2 others have done so already. However, you could argue Rachel updated hers first, but I have been improving my blog for a while. So I am officially a trend setter.

I have been investing a lot of time (usually at the dead of night) into improving my blog. This has included adding tags and such. At the moment I'm setting up mobile blogging. That means I can blog on the move (as well as twitter on the move). Well, I have to use my new shiny phone appropriately. But its taking ages.

I am insanely bored doing my dissertation at the moment. I'm hoping to get to 7000 words by tonight.

News on the coffee front. I've discovered a new and exciting way to have your coffee. Okay, it isn't probably that new. Instead of putting sugar in it, try putting honey in, instead. Does that merit a 'recipes' tag? Why not, eh?

Blogs of Note

I do occasionally have a look at the blogs of note. First, because a part of me wants to be involved in this community of bloggers. Second, because I get bored when my blog roll doesn't update. Well, to be precise, the bloggers don't update. Even if the last blog was only updated yesterday, it still feels like years since I've had someone else's life to read about. Yes, I need to get out more.

Anyway, on reading these, I've realised a fail proof plan too get my blog listed as a blog of note.

1. Get an etsy account and make something pretty. 2. Eat something organic. Grow the organic edibles for better Blogs of Note points.

3. Take photographs. Lots of photographs. Don't worry, they don't have to be of different things. They can be the same thing from lots of different angles. Even better if you intend to sell it on etsy or it's organic, or both!

4. Use pastel colours. Not a necessity, but they help.

5. Move to an exciting urban metropolis (e.g., and especially, New York) or a rural idyll (e.g. a farm an hour away from New York). No mundane suburbs, I'm afraid.

Although this may seem a vindictive attack on the Bloggers of Note, it is not. I wish I had the talent to make and sell something on an etsy account, and I take photos. But the blogs of note seem to buying into the same way of life nowadays. Perhaps less of the same?

I apologise for the rubbish photos, by the way.

Bad Idea

Sometimes I think it's a bad idea to have wireless connection. Or internet at that matter. My ability to focus on my work is greatly impeded, as you can tell. I have a 3000 word essay to write for Monday, and I'm finding it difficult to get down and do.

Anyway, the lent thing is going well, except yesterday I think I fell short by 5-15 minutes. I forgot to time, lost track etc. However, people have been sending me their prayer requests. But I still want more, people. That way I will feel accountable, and it will encourage me to pray. This lent idea has blessed me greatly, and I'm really beginning to appreciate the Bible so much more now. It is a really amazing book. However, there is still a part of me that sees it as a chore, and not as a joy (which another part does), so I'm going to have to stamp that bit out quickly. Through Genesis alone God exhibits his faithfulness, grace, mercy, love, compassion and wrath. It is quite awesome.

I really want Blogger to sort out the line breaks. I know what it is, it's the the text alignment codes that mess it up. I hate having to go into Edit Html every time and sort it out. And when you add images.

Yesterday a group of us watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was quite good, but very long. It is framed by a sort of death-bed confession just before Hurricane Katrina rages through New Orleans. It concerns a man that is born 80 years old and get younger, rather than aging. It is really moving in places, and it is filled with both hope and sadness. Some of our party saw it as a waste of two and a half hours of their life, which they'll never get back (somewhat ironic with the subject matter of the film).

The film score was remarkably good, but very characteristic of Alexandre Desplat. It had the same sort of haunting themes, with the bright, sharp and simple melodies and softly scored string accompaniments as The Painted Veil. In places he makes use of modal passages in order to create the fantastical and dream-like quality (which I think is used as a theme of Daisy), and often rises towards dissonance to give a sense of poignancy. The instrumentation is interesting, especially in Love in Murnansk. But enough of my musical analysis.

Landmark

This is a landmark post (helpfully hinted at by the title). This is-wait for it- my fiftieth post on this blog. Can I hear you cheer? This is a mark in my love-hate relationship will blogger, and this blog has been with me through the best of times, and the worst of times. Well, it never really got that bad. This post will hopefully incorporate a few of the things this blog has come to be known for. Take this opportunity to look at some of my older posts. Perhaps the one that started it all, Books and Big Brother; or the one from Paris, Surviving...just; or perhaps my favourite, Interactivodular. So knock yourself out.

Talking of knocking yourself out, I had quite a close call today. Rose and I went to explore the shore line under Constitution Hill, with the cave I went to last Sunday. The rocks, being slate, do not provide the best friction, and I tried to cross a particularly slippery bit. Also, due to the general tectonic activity the slabs of slate are all at an angle. I slipped, fell on to all fours and the struck my head against another slab of slate. Oh the blood, oh the gore. No, there was no wound, unfortunately; making this tale rather dull. But Rose found a propeller, and we saw some anemones in the rock pools. So it was all good decent fun, despite slipping over a total of three times. We saw a mother with her young daughter who was doing better than me.

Recipe time! Tonight I cooked a vegetable stir-fry which was quite nice. It contained spring onions; snap peas; green pepper; mushrooms; and carrots which I shredded with a potato peeler. I added some soy sauce and about half a teaspoon of ginger. It was quite nice, but I cooked it too long (mainly because Rose was on the phone to her mum so I had to wait to dish up).

I went to Oxfam again. I have inherited a love of charity shops from my mother. Every time we pass one we have to 'just pop in'. But I'm always amazed at the things they stock. They have notepads made from elephant dung. Elephant dung! Sorry, that was a random aside. You'd think they're paying me or something. Only nominal expenses.

Recently I've been trying to recycle better, and I saw this video on facebook. Well, I found it funny.

Sorry that this post was a bit of a miss-match. I tried to make it entertaining yet informative. Fail. Just one note, it was brought to my attention (well, actually, I thought this too, but I failed to mention it). The Green Granny's advice about buying a product from a developing country, despite it not being fairly traded, is perhaps not the best idea. We don't know who is getting the money, so it is best in these cases to buy more locally.