This and that

I've not posted much here in the last week, due to a combination of factors, most of which I won't bore you with. My health took a slight downturn early last week. It was nothing major, but it left me with very little energy for anything, other than lounging around and watching rubbish on the TV. I think I've watched more TV in the last few days than I would normally watch in six months. How people can sit in front of the box all day, I really don't know.

One good thing has come out of my enforced lounging around. I found the TV so diabolically boring most of the time, I decided to make a couple more baby hats for Save the Children. I kept going until I'd used up all my yarn oddments. I assumed I had about nine or ten little hats. When I counted them up, I had somehow made twenty two. How? I really don't know. I think the clicking of the needles must have hypnotised me.

I'm off out soon, to escape the infernal bashing, crashing and drilling coming from next door. My neighbours are having demolition construction work done. Ugh. I may as well head to the post office with my parcel of baby hats. Don't know how much it'll cost me to send them - they don't weigh much - no more than about 250 grams. Probably less than the cost of a large cappucino in a coffee shop. Oh well, time to make myself look human, if I'm off out...

Baby boy name meanings

Is there something in the air at the moment? I'm surprised at how many people I know, both online, and in my everyday life, who are expecting a new arrival in the next few months. One of my friends, who is expecting a baby boy in September, turned up at my house in a bit of a stew the other night. She was in the middle of surfing around the Internet, looking for baby name sites, when her Internet connection died. Her hubby was too busy watching football to do anything about it, so she left him to it.

Now, my friend is more than a little bit superstitious, and wants to give her son a name with a good, positive meaning. Her husband likes the name Damien, but it just reminds my friend of that evil child in The Omen movie. She likes the name Harry, but hubby thinks it's an old man's name! So, we spent a long time on Tuesday evening, looking up baby boy name meanings, to ensure her son gets a decent name that suits both parents. Current favourites are Jack, Calum and Matthew. My friend is determined that she will be the one to register the birth, otherwise the poor baby will end up with a middle name like Beckham or Rooney, given hubby's love of football. Here's hoping Jack Calum Matthew Harry Damien Beckham Rooney Jones arrives nice and safely!

Allergies and toiletries

No, this isn't a sponsored post! Just me wittering on in my usual vein. Just out of curiosity, do any of you suffer bad reactions to everyday toiletries and cleaning products? I'm thinking especially of washing-up liquid for dishes, bubble bath and shower gels. I've started having the most hideous reactions to some of these products recently. I've had everything from itching to full-blown rashes, some in very sensitive and unmentionable places. The hardest part of this problem, for me, is finding hypo-allergenic toiletries that don't cost the earth.

As far as toiletries go, I've made a wonderful discovery - something that the mums amongst you probably know all about. Baby toiletries are almost always hypo-allergenic. I've now kitted myself out with some gorgeous, lavender-scented baby bath - Boots' own brand, which is currently on a buy-one-get-one-free offer. I've also bought some Johnson's baby body wash. And guess what? Not an itch or rash in sight. Yay!

Another problem I have, is that my hands don't like soap, especially the kind found in cleaning products. Well, to my delight, I found a washing up liquid for sensitive skin yesterday - in Tesco of all places. It's called Surcare, and is actually cheaper than some of the big brand regular washing up liquids.

How many of you share similar problems? What products do you use to avoid having bad skin reactions? I'd be grateful for any recommendations, as I'm worried my problems could get worse, not better.

New article

Just a quick post to let you know I have a new article up at the UFO Magazine guest blog. It's about the recent release of declassified UFO files by the Ministry of Defence, here in the UK.

Hey there!

Apologies for not posting much here lately. My time has been taken up with other things, mainly personal stuff, research, etc. Anyway, as you all know, I'm a big fan of all that's weird and wonderful. Well, maybe not all, but that's another story! On the subject of stories, I've come across this rather amusing one, from the Irish Republic.

The Irish parliament will be debating a bill tomorrow - the Nuclear Test Ban Bill. It seems a number of Irish members of parliament are a little irked by one of the clauses in the bill, and want it removed. Which clause would that be? Well, it's a clause that says if someone detonates a nuclear bomb, and that explosion is only of a minor nature, the maximum penalty that could be imposed on them by law is 12 months in jail, or a €5,000 fine. Now, then - can someone please define a minor nuclear explosion? Thought not :).


Source

(SP) Clothes from the movies!

Are you a fashion-conscious movie fan? Have you often seen your favorite star wearing a slinky dress or cool pair of shades, and wondered where you can find the very same item? Well, there's good news. Pop along to I Saw It In.com, and there's a very good chance you will be able to locate and purchase that very item.

Clothes from the movies are often very hard to locate. Finding just one exclusive item can involve many hours of online research - and even then, you're still not guaranteed to find exactly what you're looking for. I Saw It In.com has handy drop-down menus, that allows you to search by actor, actress or movie, for your favorite clothing or accessory. You can also post information about where to find certain items, or request help in locating a particular item. You can even share your videos and photographs of the items you have purchased, with other users. The site also features competitions, and up-to-the minute movie news. So what are you waiting for? Pop along to I Saw It.com today!

Thunder?

We had a humdinger of a thunderstorm here in Swansea recently - last Friday, I think it was. It was loud, violent and spectacular, lasting for about three hours in all. I think we may be in for some more thunder. I have this strange way of knowing when there's thunder around - my hands, feet and knees swell up and become very painful. Guess what my hands, feet and knees are doing now? Yep, you've guessed it. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a thunderstorm by tomorrow night.

Yet more Wayne-isms

My cousin Wayne called me the other night. He had intended coming to stay with me for a few days, but announced he couldn't make it. When asked why, he told me he'd secured a new job, just days after being made redundant by his previous employer. He continued to explain.
'So I can't come down to Swansea after all, because I'm being induced tomorrow'.
'Congratulations', I replied. 'so will that be a Caesarian or natural birth?'
He didn't get it. What he was trying to tell me, was that he had a few induction days for his new job. He was therefore being inducted, not induced. It was a relief to realize my cousin was not about to become the first male ever to give birth.

I'll say one thing for Wayne - he has his own unique way of re-writing the English language. He phoned again sometime in the week, going:
'ooh, awch, yuck. Guess what I just did? I just stemped on a dead bee'.
'Pray tell me, dear cousin, exactly what does 'stemped' mean?'
'What do you mean? What do you think it means? I stood on the nasty little f*cker'.
'Ah, so that means you either stepped or stamped on it, and being unable to decide which, you've invented your own word'.
'I thought stemped was a word'.
'It's not in any dictionary I've read'.

Note to self: purchase a dictionary and gift wrap it ready for Wayne's next birthday.

New blogging gig

I received a very welcome message at MySpace today. Lesley very kindly invited me to become a contributor to the UFO Magazine guest blog. Needless to say, I've accepted, and will be making my first post there soon. UFO Magazine is probably the US's premier print magazine focusing on the UFO subject, so I was very flattered to be asked to participate in their guest blog. I'll post links to my articles here, so you can get a chance to read them, if you fancy it. I'll only be making occasional posts, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Conked out again

Lucretia conked out again after five minutes. I did another restore, and I've got her back online again, but the main problem is that the computer suddenly locks up when browsing the Internet, and cannot be unlocked without switching it off. When I turn it back on - it's bye bye Internet. I think the Ethernet card may be faulty, so I'm going to see if disabling it before I connect to the wireless network, will stop the freezing. I doubt it. But it's worth a try. If not - I've retrieved all my data, so even if I have to use Godzilla for a while, at least I have all my images, etc.

Wonderful news!

I've restored Lucretia to her factory settings. She lives! I'm typing this post with her. Hurrah. I'm so excited I could poop my pants!

Effing laptop!

First of all, my apologies for not visiting/commenting on other blogs as much as I would normally. Godzilla, my aged desktop, does everything VERY slowly, and being online is no fun at the moment. Also, I have to sit at my desk, which is not ideal, given my arthritic spine. Much of the time I am able to be online, is spent on researching how to build a laptop from scratch - which is what I will need to be able to do, if Lucretia needs a new motherboard. I will eventually repair her, but getting a new desktop is a priority, one that doesn't take at least 60 seconds to even think about performing any command it's given.

As for evil Lucretia, my freaky laptop, she's developed some new problems. The DVD/CD-RW drive is refusing to write any data to disk whatsoever. But Lucretia will have to go a lot further than that to defeat me. You see, I have an external CD burner, which is now happily burning my data to disc. Lucretia's C drive is also showing itself to be almost full. That's either a false report, as it had 7GB of space on it a few days ago - or I've got a virus, which has written billions of files to the C drive. That may explain why so many Windows system files are corrupted. Luckily, my data is on a separate drive. So when I've finally burnt it all to CD, Lucretia will be restored to her factory settings. If she still throws hissy fits, it's back to plan A - getting a new desktop. Ugh.

The latest Wayne-ism

My cousin, Wayne, is an endless source of misquotes, malapropism and general verbal madness. His latest one had me in stitches. As all my regular readers will know - I've had to return to using my ancient desktop PC, after the sudden demise of my laptop. I have names for my computer. The laptop is Lucretia, the desktop, Godzilla - because it's a lumbering, prehistoric and cranky beast. I said to Wayne, when he called me a few nights ago:
'oh well, I finally got all my security updated, so Godzilla is now up and running safely'.
'Oh yeah', he said, 'I used that, too'.
'Eh?' I said, 'you've lost me'.
'At the Internet cafe', he said. 'I used Godzilla'.
'Er, no you didn't. Godzilla is my old PC'.
'But they had it at the Internet cafe, too. Google Godzilla'.
WTF? Google Godzilla? I was bewildered.
'What do you mean?'
'Y'know, Google Godzilla. It's a thing like Internet Explorer. Y'know, an Interweb browser'.
'Ah. Do you mean Mozilla Firefox?'
'Yes. That's it.'
I'm going to have to keep a score of Wayne-isms as they happen. There have been so many over the years, I could have filled a huge tome with them by now.

Future plans

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm always on the lookout for ways to make money online. I've often thought about writing and selling e-books, perhaps containing some of my photography. But I've always been a bit bewildered as to how I would be able to offer a secure shopping cart, in order to receive payment for these e-books. Well, I've done a little bit of research, and I've come across some ecommerce software that offers an ideal solution.

I recently discovered Ashop Commerce's award winning shopping cart software. What I like about it is the fact that it's web-based, so I would not need to install and host this software on my own webspace. It offers four different shopping cart solutions, very reasonably priced, according to your needs. It allows you to accept credit card payments securely, and even offers a 10-day free trial offer. Your shopping cart is fully customisable, so it would fit in with your existing website or blog, and can be quickly and easily updated. Anyone who has ever installed ecommerce software on their own server will know just how difficult and unwieldy some shopping cart software can be. But Ashop takes all those worries away from you, by providing you with a fully supported, hosted solution. And if you did need help, Ashop even provides a live support tool, for instant help.

So if you've always fancied setting up your own online business, why not take all the strain out of setting up your own shopping cart, by choosing Asoft?

Some good news

I'm delighted to say that this blog has been approved by Smorty. If you're wondering what Smorty is, it's a service that connects advertisers and bloggers. Basically, if you sign up with Smorty, and your blog is approved, you have the opportunity to get paid to blog. This is an ideal way for someone like me to make some extra cash, as I cannot work full time outside the home, due to health problems. I think it's a great idea that bloggers can actually get paid for blogging. Smorty will also be a good opportunity for stay-at-home mums, students, retired persons, or indeed, anyone who has a qualifying blog, who would like to blog for money. Check it out for yourself, by clicking the link above. I'm delighted to have such an opportunity, as it will help pay for the new computer I so desperately need. Who knows? I may even be able to afford to repair my laptop, too. Overall, I think Smorty is a great idea.

Sponsored posts redux

I've just signed up with a couple of websites, to do some more sponsored posting. I remember receiving some negative comments from people the last time I did this - although the vast majority of my visitors were supportive. If anyone has anything negative to say this time - try walking a mile in my shoes before you criticize. My laptop, which is less than two years old, has suffered a major hardware failure, so I can't get online with it. My desktop PC is eight years old and needs replacing, because it takes forever just to complete the simplest of tasks on the old clunker. I need to make some extra cash quickly, to buy a new PC. No-one is going to buy it for me, I don't have a rich hubby, and I can't work full-time due to ill health. So sponsored posts it is, if my blog is approved. I know my regular blog friends will have no objections to any sponsored posts. If any casual/occasional visitors have an issue with it - well, I'm sorry, but that's the way it goes.

Anyway, please wish me luck in getting approved. I have half the money saved for a new PC. I just need to somehow find the rest. I thought about putting a Paypal 'donate' button on here, but I don't really feel comfortable about setting out a virtual begging bowl. However, if any of you win the lottery soon, I'll be happy to let you know my Paypal details ;).

Be happy!

RIP Lucretia. Long live Godzilla...

Oh well, I guess it's only a laptop. At least none of my vital parts malfunctioned on Sunday. I just wish I'd got that stupid broken connector fixed before it killed the motherboard. I don't know for certain that's what's happened, but by a process of deduction, I suspect part of Lucretia's motherboard got fried.



At the moment, I'm struggling on with Godzilla, my ancient, cranky desktop. Fair play to Godzilla. Considering he's at least eight years old, he isn't doing too badly. I replaced a few of his parts a couple of years ago, which gave him a new lease of life. I don't suppose he's doing too badly, considering he only has 256 MB of RAM and a piddly AMD Duron 750 processor. As long as I stick with web browsing, email and word processing, I'm sure Godzilla will cope for the next few weeks. At least, at the moment, I'm not entirely without a computer. It just means I have to be patient with the old clunker.



I won't be replacing the laptop. I don't know how to fix a laptop when it breaks. I'm perfectly happy fixing and upgrading desktops, so I'm getting a new desktop. I have my eye on a Dell for around £330 - which means I have a lot of saving to do over the next few months. I think I may have to start doing sponsored posts again - ugh.

I'm sorry - did I sh*t on your blog?

I have just become aware of a potentially very embarrassing situation. I may have invertently been having the occasional 'sh*t' on other people's blogs. Figuratively, of course, not literally - well, not too literally, anyway, only in an abstract sense. You see, the keys on my laptop's keyboard are very close together. Whenever I type 'shut' or 'shot', I frequently produce a very embarassing typo, due to the letter 'i' being crammed in tightly between the 'u' and the 'o'. I was about to hit the submit button on someone's comment page, when I saw, to my horror, that I'd complimented them on their wonderful 'sh*t'. Now how many more times have I typed that and NOT noticed? I dread to think. But if I have visited one of your photo posts, and left a sh*t behind - please accept my apologies. I didn't mean to do it, and I promise to be more careful with my sh*ts in future.

Progress at last

Hurrah! I've got one of my domain names pointing to a blog I'm developing. At last. Strange Days still isn't active on the new domain, but not to worry. And there's more good news. I have a generous, ad-free hosting account with Freehostia, which now means I have a Strange Days website, as well as a blog. Well, I have a few basic pages of a website so far, as I'm still working on the design. Who knows? I may have some content soon! Here's the new site, but remember - there's nothing much there at the moment, only the bare bones of a site. But please take a look and tell me what you think of the design - I've been working on it all evening. I'm no web designer, but by changing an existing template, I've come up with something I'm fairly happy with. Time for some hot chocolate, and then to bed, methinks.

Siani needs your help!

No, this is NOT a sponsored post. Just me trying to come to a decision about web-hosting.

I nearly bought a domain name and web hosting package today. But I stopped myself at the last minute, as I'm still undecided. I've had a few recommendations for web hosts from some of you lovely folks - thank you - I really appreciate your advice. Sadly, most of the suggested hosts have been US-based. I'm sure the recommended hosts are very good, but being UK-based, it makes sense to get a UK host. I need customer services who are available during UK business hours, and also, as I only have a UK debit card, it would be impossible for me to pay a non-UK host.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap and cheerful UK host? I'm probably going to get my domain name from 123 Reg, as I've used them in the past, and they're pretty cheap. I'm considering getting a hosting package with them, too. Do you use them for your hosting? What are they like?

The only package I can feasibly afford at the moment offers 100 MB of web space and 1500 MB of bandwidth/data transfer per month. Is that enough? Maybe I should dip into my meagre savings and go for the next package up from that.

If I set up a Blogger blog on my own domain, will my images still be hosted on Blogger, or will they be hosted on my domain? I've tried Wordpress, both the online and server-based versions, and I'm not keen on it, so I'll be sticking with Blogger. I'd really appreciate any help, because I don't want to waste what little money I have on the wrong choice of host or package. This domain would be for an entirely new blog, BTW. This one is staying where it is for now.