Blogalogalog!

Here’s the Thing

Some time ago, I hit the point where I just don’t like the theme I’m using any more. In fact, it’s now gone all the way past “don’t like it”. I hate it. H-a-t-e it. I’ve been away from blogging for, you know, years. I have a stack of draft posts I’ve written over that time (some no longer relevant, of course). The main reason I didn’t publish them was, ridiculously, because I don’t like the look of the site. Ewww, can’t put my shiny new words on that thing!

It’s not like it’s difficult to change the theme, either. But using a pre-made theme means it’s not going to be to my exact specifications! Whatever those are. Ugh. So I’ve been meaning to make a new theme, but I haven’t been well enough, and blah blah blah. I may as well just slap a pre-made theme on and deal with it. And if it’s near enough, make a child theme to tweak it. I can’t hate it more than what I’ve got right now, right?

Link: Dog Apologises To Baby

Can’t deny it, this is cute. Pretty good problem solving skills showing there, too. If a bit of a tendency towards overkill…

Watch This Dog’s Adorable Apology After He Steals A Baby Girl’s Toy – The Meta Picture.

In other news, I may be back to blogging again. Maybe possibly hopefully!

Teenage Dreams

It’s my blogoversary (or my blog’s blogoversary, or whatever) today, and slightly scarily it’s now 13 years old. I’m expecting hormonal tantrums with it banging around the house and yelling that it hates me any day now.

They grow up so fast!

And now that I’ve remembered to post here again today, I shall have to make some effort to blog… well, if not regularly, then at least more often. I’ve had quite an eventful few months, so I dare say I’ll be rambling on about that.

Link – Frozensoul.net | Review: In the Bed of a Duke

I have been blogging.  No really, I have – just not here.  And no, not every day either, but at least it’s more than … not blogging?  Whatever, it’s a blog, not the end of the world.  No excuses needed!

Anyhow, what I have been doing is writing short reviews on the books I’ve been reading, which are on my review blog.  That exists mainly because I have the spare domain name and it seemed a shame to be doing nothing with it.  And probably also because I feel happier having “life” things divided from “fannish” things, from long habit, even though there really is an overlap what with everything being crossposted to FB and LJ etc.  Once again: whatever.

So for the sake of ridiculous completeness, I’ll be linking my review posts from here.  Ta-da:

Review: In the Bed of a Duke | Frozensoul.net.

(Yes, sometimes I like to read total rubbish.  Don’t judge me! ;-p )

Phonelessness

Woe is me, etc etc, I am bereft of my mobile phone.  Oh noes, dramaz dramaz, how will I survive?!

Quite well, as it happens.  To be fair, I have a tablet – an old slightly creaky model, yes, but a tablet nonetheless – so it’s not like I don’t have any kind of portable interwebs.  Because that’s so very vital for things like plurking, or watching youtube or iplayer, or checking my email from the bedroom.  You know, instead of walking the 20-odd feet to the PC in the living room.

Of course, I also have a landline phone.  I’m far from cut off from the world without my mobile.  But it’s been five days, and it’s actually been kind of nice.  A sort of holiday.  I don’t really know why, since as I said it’s not that much of a practical change.  Maybe it’s that I’ve become a bit dependant on that one little device – it’s used for phone calls, texts, email, games, social networking, music, radio, ebooks, audiobooks, a calendar, a camera… but hey, look, I can actually trundle along without it perfectly well.

That doesn’t mean I’ll use it less when I get it back, but I could.  If I chose to.  Which I won’t.

Friday. Ish.

I really am a bit rubbish at this, aren’t I?  I forgot to blog again.  So I’m going to pretend it’s still Friday and this post totally counts.  Because actually I didn’t so much forget as get hit by the nap truck in the afternoon, and I only just woke up again a little while ago.

Anyway, my psych appointment went alright, I think.  No more med increases needed.  I’ve got a leaflet / listing for some courses that they’re running in things like sleep hygiene and anxiety management – CBT and things along those lines.  Hopefully I’ll be able to do one or two of those.

Right now though, I’m going to go and get some more sleep.

Accidental week off.

Or nearly a week, anyway.  Six days.  I completely forgot to blog at the weekend… and managed to carry on forgetting all week until today.  Whoops!  So I’ll extend my blogging an extra week, I think.  Or maybe I’ll keep going until the end of July.  I’ll aim for that.  And beyond, of course, but hopefully every day until then.

So, what have I been up to this week?  Not a lot, really.  Much the same as I have for the last few months.  That’s mostly involved not going out a lot.  I don’t actually remember the last time when I managed to leave the house by myself, either.  Not counting letting the cat in and out, and putting the rubbish out – somehow that doesn’t seem to count as Going Out in my wonky brain, even though if I want to go somewhere further than the end of the garden path I haven’t made it past the flat door.  Make sense of that!

I had to go out today, and will again tomorrow, as I have an appointment with my psychiatrist in the morning.  Mum has been brilliant about coming over and helping me get out / taking me places.  Today was an appointment at the Jobcentre to talk to them about work and things now that I’ve been moved onto the new ESA benefit.  In my case, that was pretty much going over the fact that, what with not being so well, I can’t do full time work, but I can continue with the (part time) Permitted Work scheme.  So that’s OK.  What was less OK was the panic attack part of the proceedings, but it wasn’t a major one and I think I’ve remembered everything alright.  If not, I can ask Adam-the-support-worker who was there with me.  Mum had just dropped me off there, as Adam knows the ropes for this kind of appointment.  But she will be coming in to the appointment tomorrow, as per usual.  Her perspective is useful, but she can also remind me of anything I forget to mention as well.  Two heads are better than one, and all that stuff.

And on that note, I’d better go and make my list of things I have to remember for tomorrow.  Oh, and wipe my phone ready for taking it back to the shop for repairs.  Poor wee thing.  (No phone?  How will I cope?! Noooooo! etc)  Good night!

Rufus Robot!

Today, I shall be pimping my friends, Holly and Larry.  Or more specifically, their new project / website / business / educational game app: Rufus Robot.

(Not, as my Mum thought I said, “Ruthless Robot”.  That would be a different game altogether, although Larry, you’re welcome to take that idea and run with it.  You’re welcome  ;-) )

The mission statement on their website says:

Our goal is to provide fun, useful, and affordable tablet-based applications to the growing number of children who need them. Many of our applications focus on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but it is our belief that these same tools will be fun and educational for early achievers too!

– Dr Holly Gastgeb

So, if you have or know kids that might enjoy and benefit from the app, go check it out.  You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter and Google+

Pimp accomplished.  Ta-daa!

Seven hundred and twenty

Yup, this is blog post #720, believe it or not.  Mind you, if I manage to keep this daily blogging lark up, I’ll be cracking on for 750 by the end of the month.  On the other hand, that is over the space of 12+ years, so it’s not that much really.

So what was I going to ramble on about today?  I don’t exactly remember, which isn’t very helpful.  Umm.  I’ve been playing around some more on the Javascript track at Codeacademy, which is fun.  I’ve done some terribly exciting filing and paperwork, and some even more thrilling housework.  I’ve also changed the plugin which auto-posts to Plurk when I blog.  Go me!

… oh.  But I forgot to hit the publish button on here.  Oops!  That generally helps.

Coding Fun

I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before – probably not, considering how infrequently I’ve actually been blogging!

But anyway.  Coding for fun!  Some time last summer (I think) I discovered CodeAcademy and I’ve been playing around on there ever since.  At the moment I’m going through their revised / new Javascript course, even though I’ve already done the original one.  Because I’m a geek and it’s fun.  I’m also working through the “Code Year” track, and I’m planning to do the PHP and Ruby ones after that.

Codeacademy profile
A bit of my profile.

It’s good for keeping my brain in gear. :-)

Mind you, I haven’t done much over, again, the last six months due to wonky-brain issues – more on that another time.  I’ve just started up again this week, though.  Unfortunately, where I picked up was right at the end of the original JS track, and I’d done something weird with my code.  Oops!  I haven’t tracked the bug down yet, but I’ll go back to it later on.  Doing the easier exercises on the new track should help me get my head back into the right place for that.

An Actual Knitting Post

No, really!

I haven’t done a lot of knitting (or spinning, and certainly not crochet) lately.  And by lately, I mean… the last 18 months.  Or thereabouts.  But in the last week or two I’ve picked up a couple of projects that’ve been languishing and started work on them again.

First of all there’s a hat for Miss RA.  Whether or not she’ll wear it is another matter.  She doesn’t seem too keen on keeping hats on!  Anyway, this is it so far:Bumpity Bump hat

And the other thing I’ve picked up again are the mittens for Mum’s shoebox project.  I didn’t finish them for last year’s box, so I figure if I do them now then I can be ahead of the curve for this autumn.

Shoebox Mittens 2013

I’ve been thinking I should also get at least one of the jumpers that are laying around in bits finally sewn up.  Yeahhh.  I’ll get right on that.

Stuck already!

Or, How To Be Extra-Specially Rubbish at Blogging, by Lou.

Oh dear.

So, it’s all of day two of this challenge thingy, and already I’m kind of stuck for what to write about.  So I’m writing about not being able to decide what to write about, mainly so that I’ll have something posted today at all!  Also, in the hope that if I keep typing, my fingers will come up with something that my brain has stalled over.  Or something like that.

Actually, I think it worked.  Because it’s not so much that I can’t think of anything to blog about, as that I have several things, but can’t decide which to start with.  So instead, I’m going to ramble about WordPress plugins.  Fascinating, hmm?  Specifically, it’s the plugin that autoposts to Plurk that’s giving me trouble – yesterday it did a weird triple post with the temporary page preview address in it instead of the address for the published post.  When I had a look on WP.org, I discovered that the plugin hasn’t been updated for ages, so that’s likely the issue there.  There are some new ones that should do the trick instead, so I’m going to install one of those instead.  Although since those also post to Twitter and FB (which I’m currently using the Jetpack module to do), I think I’ll swap over for those as well.  Assuming the new plugin works the way I want it to and all that.  /ramble.

In other news, I really want to go to the Nine Worlds con.  Really really really really really.  That would, of course, involve me Leaving The House and Going To London, and hard stuff like that.  Not to mention paying for the ticket and hotel, so.  We’ll see.  But I wanna!