A rather scary (and often hilarious) selection of vintage advertisements.
Awesome little flash game – highly addictive and beautiful to look at too. The idea is that you catch the musical notes, collect yellow notes to make your catcher bigger, if you hit a red note it makes your catcher smaller, purple notes give you a power up.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tags: Wandering The Web
Had another fabulous parents evening, this time with Akra Jr. His teacher said he was doing “excellently” (and she apparently uses that word very sparingly!)
His reading has gone up a couple of levels since he was tested at the end of year 2 (not a surprise given the amount of open books I clear off the end of his bed every night!) and he is now on some “very challenging” numeracy work. He is quiet in class, but is obviously paying attention and can answer any question thrown at him.
His spelling is excellent but handwriting is letting him down slightly. However, given that I can read what he writes, and I still can’t decipher his father’s penmanship, I think he’s doing fantastically given the obvious genetic disadvantage!
I was expecting to be told he was doing pretty well, but quite bowled over with the high praise he received tonight.
I am very careful that both kids don’t feel that they’re under pressure to succeed (my only goal is for them to come out of primary school knowing how to read, write, have basic maths skills and enjoy learning), but Akra Jr works hard and enjoys classes – I just hope that continues.
Tags: Parenting
Force Safari to Open All Links in New Tabs – MacTips
Have switched back to using Safari (for various reasons) and was getting fed up with sites that forced links into new windows – this fixes the problem nicely!
I might just have to make this – chocolate cake that’s ready in 5 minutes? Sounds too good to be true…
Rare Aquatics – Hobbyist Aquatics Shop
Have just had two snails delivered from this online store and I am very impressed. Friendly email communication, prompt delivery, securely packaged and good quality livestock.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tags: Wandering The Web
A fantastic database of telephone numbers to identify telemarketers, scammers and other people who don’t leave a message when they phone. Worth checking before you call back that mystery 1471.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tags: Wandering The Web
It’s a question that has always struck fear into my heart, but I’ve been pondering again on how best to answer it.
I’m getting more comfortable with the response “I’m a writer” as it seems a fair descriptor of my focus in life and what I want to be when I grow up. After all, I’m told repeatedly that, on average, it takes ten years of writing before seeing any success. Even then the vast majority of full-time authors rarely earn anything above pin money, yet you would still describe them as writers. Just because my skills still need work before I even consider submitting anything, doesn’t mean the increasing collection of large word-processor files on my hard-drive isn’t writing.
Of course, given my current writing patterns, a more accurate response would probably be “I am a serial starer at blank word-processor pages”, but that’s just being picky.
The only problem is that the “I’m a writer” response invites the return question of “What do you write? Would I have read any of it?” and somehow the two first draft novels that have been abandoned and a collection of half-finished short stories doesn’t sound that impressive, even if you include non-fiction writing. Most people do still equate “writer” with “published author”, rightly or wrongly we live in a culture which values paid work only.
So, moving on to paid work descriptors. Over my employment years, I could use several – all starting with the rather telling line “I work in…” (customer service / copywriting / SEO / administration – delete as applicable) rather than “I am…”. I am incredibly grateful for these jobs, they help pay bills and nice things, and I am always professional and give my very best. However, they’re sporadic and I don’t tend to think of them as part of my identity – I rarely remember to give these as my answer to “What Do You Do?”.
I do have the expected fallback of “I am a stay-at-home mother” even if it does tend to end the conversation at that point. However, it sounds increasingly pathetic to my ears now that my mothering tends to be outside school-hours only, and I was never really one to pin my whole identity on my reproductive abilities in the first place.
Maybe I should just list everything I ever do? What do you think?
“I am a writer, photographer, mother, administrator, gamer, tropical fish keeper, camper, cyclist, knitter, amateur genealogist, kitchen cook, blogger, humanist and serial hobbyist.” You know, I think the poor sod would never ask the question “what do you do?” ever again…
Tags: The Things I Do For Money
Okay, so the usual signs are important in our household too. The daffodils are a cheery sight and I love to see more bird activity, listen to them singing. But there are some more significant annual milestones for us:
And you thought I had a dull life.
Tags: A Day In My Life
Akra broke my food processor on Tuesday.
Well, okay, I’d broken the catch on the locking mechanism a few months before and it had just been limping along the best it could, but the bowl did shatter rather spectacularly when Akra dropped it while washing up.
I half-heartedly looked for spare parts resellers, as I had done when the catch had broken, but hardly anyone seemed to stock them for that particular model and the few places that did were absurdly expensive. It made much more sense just to replace the whole thing.
I had two criteria: it had to be at least a 3L bowl, and I had to be able to chop, make pastry and grate/slice stuff.
After picking myself up off the floor in shock at how expensive some food processors can be, I quickly discovered that buying a white processor over a stainless steel finish one saved me about £60 (why?! That has to be a con, surely?). I got a mid-range model that did everything I wanted it to and had good reviews on Amazon.
It arrived this morning and I have a couple of thoughts about it. Firstly, the box it came in was HUGE! Bit of a shock when I was expecting a fairly compact model that would live on the kitchen counter. Fortunately, most of it was polystyrene packing. There was still a big box of accessories to find a home for in my kitchen cupboards, though.
Secondly, the recipe book that comes with it looks really good. I found myself flipping through the pages (fantasy cooking, as you do) and then started to really regret not having bought the all-singing all-dancing posher model (which, of course, the recipe book also catered for). If only, I’d spent more money and got one with the juicer, the chocolate grater and all the extra fancy blades!
Then I remembered that I’d had all those extra accessories on my old food processor and they’d gathered dust in the back of a cupboard for years. I only ever used the dough blade, the chopping blade, a grating disk and a slicing disk. That was it.
I’ve put the recipe book safely away on my cookery book shelf, now. I probably won’t look at that ever again, either.
Tags: Food, Glorious Food
Had a fantastic parents evening with Li’l Bhaji’s teacher this evening. He is in Reception and adores her with all his heart and soul, and it was obvious that the feeling was mutual!
He has apparently met all his targets for Foundation Stage already and has been set Year 1 targets in writing, reading and numeracy – although the teacher was keen to stress that she only believed in stretching him when he was actively choosing the advanced activities and he was still going to get lots of time to play.
His behaviour in class is good, deteriorates a bit when he’s tired or really really REALLY wants something (!) but nothing that is unexpected for a boy in Reception.
Considering that he’s not even 5 years old yet (May birthday), so one of the younger ones in the class, he’s doing incredibly well. I am so grateful that he has such a passionate and caring teacher in his first year of school – her enthusiasm is obviously catching!
Tags: Parenting · Site Stuff
Following yesterday’s review, I’ve since found a great comparison review of the Wii Fit and My Fitness Coach games over at Wayrift.
It’s a very well written and comprehensive review. The author has obviously had similar issues to me with both games, but goes into more detail on how My Fitness Coach works. It’s worth taking a look at if you’re still deciding which fitness system to get.
In other news, I’ve finally unlocked a new location and new music! I’m making progress!
Tags: Computer Addicts Anonymous · Keeping Fit(ish)
This Christmas, the Naan family got a Wii Fit – something I’d initially been quite sceptical about but after reading great reviews was quite excited about finally getting it. Two weeks ago, for various reasons, I also bought My Fitness Coach (Wii) – another personal virtual trainer style product.
I’ve been asked by several people how they compared with each other, so it seemed sensible to compile my thoughts into a single blog post. Rather than describe each one separately, I’ve decided to split the post into various categories to give each a fair comparison: price, navigation and tracking, quality of the workout, longevity.
WARNING: this is an excessively long post and a thorough review. I will not be in the least offended if you just skip it. The rest of the post continues after the jump…