Geeking – Enchilada Sunrise

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

A decade of blogging

I very nearly forgot altogether, but yesterday was my “blogoversary”. The tenth anniversary of starting this blog, in fact.

It doesn’t feel like ten years, but then there have been some years where I’ve barely blogged at all, or at least times when I’ve been mostly using Livejournal or similar platforms instead. As I think I’ve said in previous anniversary posts, this blog has gone through a few changes in terms of its back-end platform – Blogger, Movable Type, and now WordPress – over the last decade. I feel pretty settled now, though. And at least I’m managing to post more, if not regularly.

Perhaps with this new blogging year, I should make that a mini-resolution: to pick a day and blog regularly once a week. After all, if I can blog every day for a month, I can do once a week at the least. In fact, since it’s Friday today, why not have Friday as my must-post day. If I can’t think of anything else to say, at least I could do a weekly round up. Preferably it’ll kick start me (again) into posting more frequently than that. Right then, I’m going to go off and stop talking about posting, and actually make a start on posting something with Real Content. Good night.

Things and Stuff

Today has been a day of variety, which has been nice! I started out by going up to the Christmas fair for Mum’s church – I got there quite late on, so I helped clear up and carry the remaining stuff back up to the church. I got a few nice cards and nick knacks for gifts, so that was a worthwhile trip. Then I walked with Mum back to her house for a drink and then a lift home.

On the way up to Mum’s place, I stopped off and did a geocache that was en route. It took me a bit longer than I’d planned due to me being disorganised with my stuff, but it was still a speedy one. Not a micro one this time, but a still small one. So not big enough to put the travelling monkey into, yet. Poor monkey! I’ll move him on soon, by hook or by crook!

After visiting at Mum’s for a while, we came back here and had dinner – stir fry followed by cupcakes! Then Mum went home and I’ve been knitting and watching Strictly Come Dancing. I’m still working on the Travelling Woman, but hopefully I’ll be done soon. Maybe tonight? Maybe tomorrow.

And then I’ve been playing with Blip.fm – I’ve put a widget linking to my account there in the sidebar, and I think it’s possible to play some tracks directly from here? I’m not sure, I’m still figuring it out. That’s not what I’m using it for, anyway. Mostly I’m listening to the songs my friends have playlisted. Is that even a word? Probably not, but I know what I mean, and I’m sure you do too. Anyway, I thought I’d put the widget up here because in the first place I can, and also because I’m trying to get all my web stuff better linked together. Integrate my web presence. Oh how pretentious. ;-)

Digital Housekeeping

I’ve been doing housekeeping tasks on the computer all day¹, and I still haven’t even scratched the surface. Or that’s how it feels – I’ve backed a load of ebooks and photos up onto DVD, and cleared up my podcasts folder… and I still have far too much to do. I need to grab one of those programs that sorts out all the broken stuff in the registry, etc. Although I don’t know if I have room to install one. Oh noes, it’s all so difficult! Heh. Shall I just do a reformat and reinstall? It’s about time I did anyway. My poor computer can’t cope with much as it is – it’s getting a bit elderly, relatively speaking. If only I could (no offence, ‘puter) replace it. Not all of it, since some parts are just fine. But the most important components could do with replacing or boosting, no getting around it. Time to start saving up!

¹ OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, since I have been out to KnitJam this evening as well, and done a bit of spinning (while waiting for DVDs to burn, but never mind).

W is for Who!

Doctor Who, of course – today was the season finale. No spoilers here, because I know it doesn’t air in the US (and Australia, I think) for another couple of weeks, but I will say that I loved it! The solution to the cliffhanger of last week, and the arc that’s been on-going all season was wonderfully twisty and just right. And oh, there were just enough little hints dropped that I really want to be able to see next season as soon as possible now, too. Evil, evil showrunners! It’s six months til the Christmas Special (and if that’s what was mentioned at the very end, then hee!), and about nine months until season 6. Aaaaah! I’ll just have to keep busy until then, won’t I?

S is for Spinning

I can’t believe it’s come round again already, but the Tour de Fleece starts again on 3rd July. Which means I shall be spinning along with many many others for the duration of the Tour de France bike race. I probably won’t be actually watching the race as I spin, because I have other things I want to watch and listen to that interest me more. I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to be spinning yet, but I think “as much as possible” covers it fairly well.

Happily, I’ve solved the missing post button (and tags and categories areas) problem in the edit screen. Of course I went and did all the standard things first, like disabling all my plugins. And then it occurred to me to try changing the screen back to the default 2 column view, instead of the 1 column I had it set on. Oh look, there were the missing areas. I’ve now rearranged and reset it back to the way it was, and all is well. Hoorah!

Doctor Who finale (Pt1)

(Or, Non-alphabetical Post The Second)

I’ve just watched the first part of this year’s Doctor Who finale, “The Pandorica Opens” (and then Confidential, and then Casualty, but never mind that). Wow, that was awesome. And coooool, just like bow ties are coooool. I really loved the pre-credit sequence, the way it tied in so many of the episodes from this season. And it just all got more epic from there. I have to admit, I’m feeling a little smug because I’d guessed the purpose of the Pandorica, but I hadn’t guessed exactly why, and I loved that twist. I have no idea where it’s going to go from there, but I have a feeling it’s All About Amy. Somehow, however impossible that seems. After all, it doesn’t seem like there’s any way out. It felt more like a full stop of an ending than a comma. Still a cliffhanger, but… well, if this had been the last ever episode of Doctor Who, even though it would have been a tragic one, I’d’ve been OK with that. I do hope next week lives up to that!

L is for Lazy Sunday

I really have done pretty much pants-all today. I should make some kind of effort to at least get ready for doing things tomorrow – put the sheets in the washing machine so they’re ready to go, or something. We didn’t have dinner over at Mum’s today as we usually do on a Sunday, because we’ve met up twice this week already (and are therefore sick of one another ;-) ). I think the only other thing I really want to do this evening before I go to bed is catch up with yesterday’s Doctor Who episode. Also, I just realised that Casualty was on. I’d thought it wasn’t on because of football, but it seems I was wrong. I expect it’ll get cancelled at some point during the world cup, though. But anyway, that’s another show I have to catch up with at some time this week. I love a bit of cheesy hospital soapudrama.

I’ve also been thinking about changing the design for this site. I could just plonk a new theme (by someone else) on for a while, while I’m coding up my own one. It’s an idea. One which I shall have a think about! Some more. Yes.

E is for Elementary…

… my dear Watson. Which basically means that Charlotte is here and we’re watching movies! Sherlock Holmes, some of Return of the King, and… whatever else will depend on what time we have. We’ve watched Doctor Who as well, of course. Earlier today we went and saw Ally, and went over to the park where they were having some kind of… something. With music and some stalls set up and all that. It was fun, which is what matters!

Now it’s back to the movie watching. Robert Downey Jnr, yay!

35 – Fic Rec: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in 15 Minutes

No, this isn’t a flashback to the 2003 Blogathon (where I was… reccing Harry Potter fic). Well, not much. I hadn’t read HP fic for ages and ages, but the new movie made me want to go and search some out again. Don’t know why this one did and the others didn’t. Maybe because I’m a little bit between fandoms, even though I’ve been reading Star Trek: Reboot fic on and off. Anyway, I’ve just been reading this, and it was a lot of fun. So here I am passing it on:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in Fifteen Minutes, by Cleolinda Jones.

DUMBLEDORE: Aren’t we supposed to be at the Dursleys’ for a Very Significant Scene?
HARRY: I, well, uh… thought I’d flirt with this waitress? You know, in a brief attempt at having a relatively normal life?
DUMBLEDORE: Please, the Chosen One doesn’t get to be happy.