My first thought on clicking through to Rough Draft: “Ooo… nice layout and design”.

Second thought: “Yay! Proper paragraphs!”

I then found myself reading a meme in interest – ME! I hardly ever read memes, almost always skip them as I never saw the point of reading the same thing over and over at every blog you visit – so d.challener roe’s site is setting a new precedent for me.

I might be in the process of being overly effusive, but this site really is a lovely read. The author is a writer, reader and fellow nerd – what’s not to like? The entries are compelling, well-written, grammatically correct and infused with a sense of humour. I really think this is a site I’m going to be reading a long time in the future.

With much love and thanks to Miss L who went out of her way to bring big smiles to two very excited little boys’ faces. (Oh all right, I was the most excited of all!)

She was a little mean though – she wouldn’t swap him for my ageing Micra. Can’t think why…

Finally, the Biorb is here!

Short post, partly because it took me ages to set the tank up (and my arm is now VERY cold for readjusting the ceramic media after putting the water in) and partly because Zip and Lisa both talk too much on MSN – shamelessly distracting me from doing anything productive this evening. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, back to the fish tank. My mission tomorrow is to pick out some plastic plants and tasteless decorations. I shall wait another day or two to get the fish, I think.

Anyone got any good fish names?

Sorry I haven’t posted for a couple of days – I’ve had the lurgy and I’ve been left feeling fairly drained and uninspired. In combination with the start of half-term, any productivity has completely gone out of the window!

So, I shall just leave you with a quick link today – something useful for those of us in the UK who always feel slightly unsure what our rights to taking photographs in public places actually are:

The UK Photographers Rights Guide – handily downloadable as an A4 printable PDF so you can dish it out if ever you get a query while out and about.

I’ve just had to cancel an online subscription thing. I was feeling grumpy because I could only cancel by telephone and it was a US number – took me ages to work out how you dial a toll free number from the UK (note to self for future reference: 00 1 800 … NOT 00 1 1 800), but OH MY GOD what an amazing experience!

The customer service representative was NICE to me. She was genuinely cheerful, pleasant and helpful. The “Have A Nice Day” at the end was heartfelt… I was almost cringing by the overwhelming niceness of it all (we brits don’t deal with effusiveness very well – it’s a fatal flaw).

But then I got off the phone and thought – why can’t we do that? I mean, every time I get on the phone I have to hype myself up to deal with surly, uncooperative and uninterested staff whose only goal is to make sure the blame lies squarely on the customer. If I’m lucky, that’s all based in the UK – more usually, I get directed to a call centre in India where the staff don’t know anything beyond their checklist on the screen and who have no ability to put me through to anyone in authority to make a decision.

Despite having worked over seven years in a customer service capacity myself and I always decry bad customer service, it occurs to me that I’ve come to expect being treated like something the dog stepped in when I’m on the phone. Why do we put up with this? (and can I emigrate please?)

My heart sank as soon as I saw it as an entry for the Monthly Scavenger Hunt – “someone you don’t know holding hands”. I loathe taking candid shots at the best of times, and knew this would be the most difficult item to find in the hunt.

Yesterday was my town day. It took me ages to find the setting on my camera phone to turn it into silent stealth mode, but I got there in the end after accidentally taking lots of pictures of my feet (no, I’ve deleted those now – shush). I wandered around the high street with Li’l Bhaji strapped in his pushchair, attempting to look non-threatening and ready to casually look puzzled and fiddle with my mobile if I saw anyone look vaguely couply.

Of course, this is Worcester on a wintery Wednesday morning. Everyone in town is on a mission, mostly on their own and mostly with carrier bags in both hands. It wasn’t looking good. There were a few elderly couples taking it at a more leisurely pace, but they favoured the arm looped through the other approach, which is just shocking in this day and age – don’t people hold hands anymore?!

After an hour I gave up and came home. Flash forward to school picking up time – I’m running late as Li’l Bhaji overslept in his lunchtime nap (he’s coming down with the most awful cold and is very snotty grotty). I’m just getting my coat on when I notice a couple walk past the window holding hands. I don’t think I’ve EVER got my shoes on so fast! They were quite a way ahead when I got to the position I could take a quick shot on the camera phone, but I managed it and still got to the school on time. Promptly forgot all about it.

Later in the evening when I had chance to sit down and catch up with my Flickr groups, I remembered the photo and got the phone out. Got my bluetooth gizmo out and plugged it into the laptop’s USB port. A big fat nothing. Cue several hours of trying to point the phone at the computer in different angles, waving it around a lot and screaming “BUT IT’S THERE!” as the connection failed yet again. The one photo I probably was never going to get again was stuck on the damn phone.

Sod it, I thought – I’ll pay to email it to myself – this is *important* (did I mention how addicting the Monthly Scavenger Hunt was?). Four email attempts timed out later I was ready to pay big bucks – MMS time. Nope, the file was too big to MMS. Bugger.

Eventually, with a lot of swearing, a lot of uninstalling and reinstalling we managed to get the photo over to Akra’s computer. He then tried to dump it on my desktop – the reinstalling had somehow broken the network. At this point, I’m fairly certain the photo is cursed – see I *told* you candid shots were bad karma. Fortunately, the network seemed to fix itself after a reboot and the photo was duly opened in Paintshop Pro – finally I could see my shot at full size.

Oh.My.God. It’s abysmal. I know camera phone shots are never great, but this one was grainy, out of focus and very blurry. You could hardly see the couple in the distance. If it had been ANY OTHER SHOT it would have been put straight into the recycle bin. But no – this was going to have to be a rescue job – I’m not going through all that again. I know – black & white – the coverer of all sins!

And bugger me… it didn’t turn out half bad!

So how far will you go for a photo?

Akra Jr has been nagging for a pet for a while now. He’s not yet 5, I’m allergic to most things, so his nagging hasn’t been very successful. He’s asked for a pet fish as a compromise, but he’s been getting a general “I’ll think about it when you’re older” fob off for quite a while now.

Anyway, I’ve just ordered myself a fish tank with my birthday money. I blame Fish Tycoon, but my position on small aquatic creatures has considerably weakened recently. Besides, I’m older and wiser now – I’ve had practise in being responsible, and I’m SURE these goldfish will last longer than Gilbert the First (my first goldfish owned as a newly wed – I was optimistic with my naming – he lasted a year).

Of course, I didn’t end up with just any old fishtank, but a Biorb – a high-tech fish bowl with a clever filtration system and an intelligent LED lighting system that cycles through different lighting environments. It may as well have a dual use as a lamp. I shall probably go choose plastic plants and ornaments in person once I work out how much space is in there and what will look good.

Of course, I don’t *actually* have any fish yet, and will be introducing them gradually once the tank has been activated (yes, that’s the terminology they use – see I told you it was a geek’s dream). And it’s all just for the boys benefit really… yes… it’s good for them to have a pet. I’m not really excited at all. Not me.

That’s it. That’s my sum total of my notes I made yesterday when I had a sudden brainwave about what to write about today: Noise.

Of course, it obviously meant something to me at the time – I have no doubt that I was convinced it was such an obvious word that I’d have no trouble picking up the thought process again later on. Only I have absolutely no clue what the hell I was on about.

Was I getting annoyed at the decibel level of my two sons? Was I thinking about low-light photography and the problems of shooting at the higher ISOs? Was it an insightful ponder on the increasing popularity of the humble blog meaning that some of the best voices were getting lost in all the noise (if it was, I suspect that at the moment I am contributing to the noise rather than the voices)?

I have no bloody idea.

Someone is obviously stealing my thoughts as well as my time. It’s the only possible explanation.

It’s either that, or I’m now getting loopy in my old age (and yes, I had a lovely birthday, thank you all).

#It’s just a jump to the left…

…ahem, sorry. Not that sort of time warp.

Now, where was I… oh yes. What did you lot do with all my time? I swear that someone else has got more than their fair quota and are robbing me of MY time.

All of a sudden it’s taking most of my day to do my “essential” chore list before even getting to anything interesting and then there’s all the blogs I want to keep up with, the photo groups I *must* stay on top of and my reading pile isn’t getting any smaller. The children, sweet as they are, are embarrassingly having a fuller social life than I am… what’s going on?!

Add to that motivation being at an all time low, and life isn’t very productive in the Naan household.

So own up – who nicked my time?

Music, sports and telly addicts are likely to enjoy this week’s blog – Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green.

Scooter hails from Ohio and he certainly knows his stuff with plenty of detailed reviews. If you fancy yourself a bit of a music expert, be sure to have a go at his monthly lyrics quiz.

My only complaint would be that it’s a little advert heavy, but if you can look past that then it’s worth a read.