Fantasy Maps
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
1
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Cars
I'm a total newb when it comes to cars. I haven't got a driver's license (although that's to change in a few months) and besides having a basic knowledge of engineering and physics, I know nothing about the actual machines.
My wife had a nice little runabout before we got married and we still use it to careen up and down the A14 every day. It's a little Nissan Micra and it's called 'Scoot'. But sadly Scoot is getting a bit long in the tooth. It's done its job with admirable grace and performance (only breaking down twice as long as we've had it) but the money we need to spend on it to keep it in shape is getting a bit much. But then again, it's almost 15 years old...
But now we're getting in the game of buying a new (used) car. And my god, what a minefield it is. I'm not even talking about the dodgy dealers, the wrecks sold as new or the stolen cars out there. No, it starts with the sheer number of brands, makes and types out there.
Brands I still get. Most of them I know if only by name, but when you drive (or more accurately: get driven) up and down a very busy patch of road every day, you get to know brand badges quite well.
Makes. Still not too bad. They don't tend to change that often. People like that they can go into a dealership and know that a Golf is a nippy little car and a V40 is an estate. Fair enough. You do get into problems if you want to make any sense of them though. Numbers, names, codes... as the great Eddy Izzard said: 'It makes no sense.'
But then. The sheer variety in types, versions, badges, luxury types, special editions, sport versions.... It is enough to drive you wild.
And we're d(r)iving straight in to it....
My wife had a nice little runabout before we got married and we still use it to careen up and down the A14 every day. It's a little Nissan Micra and it's called 'Scoot'. But sadly Scoot is getting a bit long in the tooth. It's done its job with admirable grace and performance (only breaking down twice as long as we've had it) but the money we need to spend on it to keep it in shape is getting a bit much. But then again, it's almost 15 years old...
But now we're getting in the game of buying a new (used) car. And my god, what a minefield it is. I'm not even talking about the dodgy dealers, the wrecks sold as new or the stolen cars out there. No, it starts with the sheer number of brands, makes and types out there.
Brands I still get. Most of them I know if only by name, but when you drive (or more accurately: get driven) up and down a very busy patch of road every day, you get to know brand badges quite well.
Makes. Still not too bad. They don't tend to change that often. People like that they can go into a dealership and know that a Golf is a nippy little car and a V40 is an estate. Fair enough. You do get into problems if you want to make any sense of them though. Numbers, names, codes... as the great Eddy Izzard said: 'It makes no sense.'
But then. The sheer variety in types, versions, badges, luxury types, special editions, sport versions.... It is enough to drive you wild.
And we're d(r)iving straight in to it....
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Spam!
Today I got my first comment spam. Not nice. For a second I thought "Hey! I'm popular!!!" - But no. Just Spam.
So I've had to enable the word verification feature of Blogger. I was hoping to keep this off for as long as I could, but it's necessary now.
I hope this doesn't deter the people that actually want to comment too much. Please continue commenting. I do like the odd reaction now and then :)
And now back to our (ir)regular programming...
So I've had to enable the word verification feature of Blogger. I was hoping to keep this off for as long as I could, but it's necessary now.
I hope this doesn't deter the people that actually want to comment too much. Please continue commenting. I do like the odd reaction now and then :)
And now back to our (ir)regular programming...
Monday, July 02, 2007
Potters and Trees
Hello all! Sorry I haven't been updating my blog very much recently (sorry Suus!), but nothing really noteworthy happened. Life plodded along all on its own and didn't need a blog to worry about.
However, two nice thing happened to me recently: I won a prize and I discovered a nice Web 2.0 application.
The prize I won is very exciting indeed: Amanda and I are going to the official launch of the new Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). I entered a prize draw and we won two tickets to the event and one signed copy of the book each, which will be signed on the night itself! We might even be in the first 500 (The ticket no. is very low) and if that's the case we will be listening to J.K. Rowling herself reading a bit from the book.
Yes, both Amanda and I are fairly big Potter fans. Not fanatical, but we did take some time off to be able to finish the book after we get it. (Okay, we're also painting a room, but that's beside the point)
I never win anything, so this is a nice surprise. The only downside is that we will have to be in London at the National History Museum at 1am on Saturday morning. It's going to be a long night...
The second thing I talked about above is the website http://www.geni.com which is an online family tree application. Some members of my family have been busy doing this for a while now, but I never really got into it. However, Geni adds a Web 2.0/social aspect to it. It feels almost myspace/facebook in its approach and it is really easy to fill in stuff about people you know from your family. But then you can enter their email address and invite them to join in too! The entry you created for them becomes the starting point for their own account and off they go!
It's a breeze to add other people, view the tree, list birthdays and anniversaries, upload photos and note who's in them etc. etc. It really feels like a very slick and well thought-out bit of code. I've got my wife, her mom and my mom working at the tree, and we've got more than 200 people already in the tree between us. We've even got the family genealogist of my mom's family willing to merge his tree with ours as soon as genie figures out how to do it.
Give it a whirl. I'm sure you'll waste a lot of hours adding your direct family and finding out who knows a lot more about it than you do.
However, two nice thing happened to me recently: I won a prize and I discovered a nice Web 2.0 application.
The prize I won is very exciting indeed: Amanda and I are going to the official launch of the new Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). I entered a prize draw and we won two tickets to the event and one signed copy of the book each, which will be signed on the night itself! We might even be in the first 500 (The ticket no. is very low) and if that's the case we will be listening to J.K. Rowling herself reading a bit from the book.
Yes, both Amanda and I are fairly big Potter fans. Not fanatical, but we did take some time off to be able to finish the book after we get it. (Okay, we're also painting a room, but that's beside the point)
I never win anything, so this is a nice surprise. The only downside is that we will have to be in London at the National History Museum at 1am on Saturday morning. It's going to be a long night...
The second thing I talked about above is the website http://www.geni.com which is an online family tree application. Some members of my family have been busy doing this for a while now, but I never really got into it. However, Geni adds a Web 2.0/social aspect to it. It feels almost myspace/facebook in its approach and it is really easy to fill in stuff about people you know from your family. But then you can enter their email address and invite them to join in too! The entry you created for them becomes the starting point for their own account and off they go!
It's a breeze to add other people, view the tree, list birthdays and anniversaries, upload photos and note who's in them etc. etc. It really feels like a very slick and well thought-out bit of code. I've got my wife, her mom and my mom working at the tree, and we've got more than 200 people already in the tree between us. We've even got the family genealogist of my mom's family willing to merge his tree with ours as soon as genie figures out how to do it.
Give it a whirl. I'm sure you'll waste a lot of hours adding your direct family and finding out who knows a lot more about it than you do.
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