In last week's Supernanny she commented that to the mother everything seemed 'this big because she was tired' which is pretty much how I felt this morning. I got sick of my dinner last night for being so dry and I desperately wanted some normal bread and as a result everything little niggle seemed like a major insurmountable crisis.

I'm not sure what it was that happened between then and now (specially as I was at work!) but it's all seeming a lot smaller this evening.

I read an Atlantis fic the other day, Day Break ,which suddenly made me believe in the Sheppard/McKay pairing. I think it was entirely due to one comment, where McKay off-handedly mentions that Sheppard is in McKay's meeting being Sheppard's pretty. And I thought that seemed exactly like something McKay would say. So now I can see Shep/McKay, Shep/Teyla and Shep/Weir. And I thought shipping Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel was complicated.

Before I know it I found myself writing a Shep/McKay fic while I was writing a database this afternoon (which explains why my database was full of errors). It's fairly drafty but for once I don't care - it might make it into a longer fic at some point, I might never do anything with it again, but here it is anyway. Let's see if I can remember how to do this this simultaneous LJ-cut thing...

Read more...

Gone to Blackpool - it was cold and tacky, the Pleasure Beach didn't involve a beach and mainly consisted of expensive roller coasters. I was too tired to care much about the con as well.

Had my first guitar lesson - it's really frustrating not being able to play it but I'm enjoying it all the same

Got my WP blog up and running! The only reason I have to go to LJ now is to post comments

Actually slept

I got my test results back to find out what I am intolerant to, and why I've been so ill lately. And it is apparently:

Cows Milk, Wheat, Gluten, Egg White, Cherry, Almond, Chilli Pepper, Ginger, Parsley, Vanilla

Some of those I'm not entirely convinced about - I think I might be allergic to chilli, so I've not had that for a long time, so shouldn't therefore show up. I know about milk and I did suspect wheat, as it was the only thing left that could possibly be causing it.

So that all makes eating more complicated - although only time will tell if those results are true. I'd love someone to just invent a pill that you took once a day that had all your nutrients in it and filled you up. Although knowing my luck they'd put lactose in it. It is, incidentally, in hay fever pills, some travel sickness pills and the contraceptive pill. Possibly others as well, but I haven't tried to take any of those.

But at least this weekend I'm off to Blackpool for Prime (Buffy con) so I can legitmately eat lots of chocolate.

For some reason today I started thinking about a series of books I read some of when I was younger. After a google hunt I found a list of titles (here). I have a secret American High School passion (well, a bit of one). Plus they were cheap (�1.50 each - and they did some of them as four books in one). I also probably liked them because absolutely everyone else was reading Sweet Valley High and that put me off. I must get that from my mum - although she loved the films she never read Lord of the Rings because everyone else was when she was younger.

And then, later it occured to me that a popular topic of conversation is children's TV programmes you remember. But never books - perhaps because there are too many. And early on, it's pretty much going to consist of Enid Blyton, and later on be scarred from being told you have to read pre-20th century books for GCSE English. And in my case being forced to read 'improving books' that I didn't understand a word of. Hence my retreat to Sweet Valley High and Cheerleaders.

Beyond the ones I mentioned, though, I can't remember many others (although it's amazing how much you remember once you get started). There was the Four Marys but that was in a comic, I think, which must have been my (very) brief comic reading period. I spent all the time wishing they'd get rid of the pictures so there'd be more room for words.

I remember stories about boarding school. And they'd get measles and have to be quarantined at home and not allowed back to school at the start of term. I think that was Enid Blyton as well

I remember sitting at the doctors reading a book full of so many long words I didn't understand a word of. I'd love to see it now, see if it made any more sense, but I don't remember any more of it than that.

I remember Thomas the Tank Engine was all in little books and lived on my top shelf. I remember Judy Blume, although that's as much as I remember. Except that I was 13 when I read that one (incidentally, I've just discovered that Ctrl-U gives you view source - I was going for underlining but forgot I was in html). Oh, and there was one where two girls wanted their breasts to be bigger, which I didn't understand even when I didn't have any.

I remember the Demon Headmaster, although not what it was about him.

I remember a series about a girl called Gemma who had to live with her cousins. They converted the attic for her, so she could sleep there. I never understood this until I visited the house of a rich friend of mine and they had stairs up to their attic, which you could stand up in. Something I've never seen before or since.

I remember a series about Sadlers Wells and some of the - probably girls - who went there. One of them decided she was more into Spanish dancing. I'd like to point out at this point that I've never in my life done ballet.

It does all sound a bit girly but until I was 18 boys were an alien species, and who would want to read about them?

I seem to have had an expensive week. Wednesday I went to see The Importance of Being Earnest, which was for my Rotaract Presidents Night, so I can't really complain about that one (not least because it wasn't that much money). Plus it was really funny. I really enjoyed seeing it done live. It's been a while since I read it, so if they deviated much from the original text, I didn't notice. The butler was the funniest - purely by the way he moved. Algy was the best looking

Thursday I handed over large sums of money for guitar lessons. I need to give them more money for a guitar as well, but as they don't start for a couple of weeks, I'll wait till then. I'm looking forward to it, though.

Afterwards I sat down to watch stuff I'd videoed. The Dead Zone, I discovered, was the last episode of series 2 and Channel 5 are going straight into 3, so that's good. My video didn't quite manage to tape Lost though (at least it's repeated tomorrow), even though I re-set the date on Wednesday morning. At the moment it thinks the week goes ...Tuesday, Tuesday, Thursday..., which is unhelpful when you want to tape anything on a Wednesday.

So I've bought a new video. It's silver, so won't show up the dust so much. It definitely gets Meridian, so I can tape Monkeys in future (which is great). It's annoying though because when you set it to record you can't type in the info, you have to press the left and right buttons to change the numbers, which takes so much longer. But if at least acknowledges the existence of Wednesdays it'll be something. I considered getting a DVD or hard disk recorder but I'd still need a video to play my videos on. And I technically already have DVD and hard disk recorders - on my computer. Which will only work when it's turned on - which it isn't when I'm out.

I've also managed to sort out the main template for my WordPress blog. There's still a load of pages to sort out, but hopefully it'll get easier from now on. The stuff I was doing on it today wasn't helped by me looking at it in Internet Explorer and discovering a whole load of things that looked totally different. It looks identical on dad's computer now (and would on mine, except I have the font size turned up as default).

This morning I got an adaptor for my keyboard at work. I was expecting one that allowed me to plug two PS/2 devices into one USB one and this just changed PS/2 to USB. But I thought I'd try it anyway. It doesn't work.

So, having established this, I proceeded to plug my old computer back in. At which point my keyboard stopped working. I'd had a bit of trouble plugging it back in and when I took it out I discovered I'd forgotten that forcing it doesn't work for computers. I'd bent one of the pins.

So now I'm using the keyboard and mouse I could have had a week ago and have a new keyboard on order. Computers, don't you just love 'em?

I've also spent a couple of hours this evening playing with my WordPress template. It now has a middle and a left-hand side. For the default view. It probably wouldn't have taken me so long except that I would change little bits, upload it, hit refresh and couldn't work out why it wasn't changing, even when I reached the stage of changing something really obvious that couldn't possibly fail to show up. The solution? I was uploading into the wrong folder. I did it twice as well.

After deciding to definitely stick with Blogger I found their forum, and people saying why they switched to WordPress. Dad had a testing one I could play with, so then I spent the day playing with my own.

It's so unfinished it's not funny. It's great if you have no idea what you're doing and there are 250 or so templates to choose from with all sorts of bits that it's far easier to customise than Blogger or LJ. However, I want it to look like my site, which is easier said than done, especially as my site predates my knowledge of CSS, hence not having any.

The best thing about WordPress is that there's a plugin that allows you to post to LJ at the same time as posting to WP without having to copy and paste it into LJ. It even does LJ cuts (or would if I could remember the code). Which makes it really useful. And also the only plugin I currently have working...

And now, what I was planning to talk about. I haven't got much writing done recently. Wednesday I managed 400 words but just kept getting distracted by the thunderstorm that was pretty, going round and round (just as you thought it had stopped, it came back again), and did nothing to help the heat & humidity. Then Thursday I woke up ill, so didn't get much done.

I did, however, make a start on going through Blakes 7 series 2 in order (except for the ones I watched a while ago when I was trying to work out which one I'd missed). I've just discovered I've also missed Killer. Most of them, even though I think I remember it, I've found out I don't. This one I don't remember any of at all. Not sure how that one slipped through.

Having seen series 3 recently I've noticed all sorts of differences between the two:

• Avon and Vila are much more friendly in series 3. Which is tragic when you think about what happens later. When I say friendly, this does take into account that this is Avon. He's protective of Vila, and Vila sticks close to Avon and uses him for protection.
• Vila's a lot less whiny and gets on with it more. I think this comes from having Blake tell him what to do rather than Avon or Tarrant. He trusts Blake more.
• There's much more of a purpose in series 2 rather than just randomly going places and maybe thinking about the rebellion in series 3. That comes from having Blake, and from having one leader who everyone follows, rather than Avon and Tarrant both trying to lead.
• The amount of time Blake and Avon manage to spend holding onto each other. I have noticed it before (like everytime I've watched it), it just seems to be something I forget in between viewings.

I spent Friday night playing with my blog. I've not finished, so all that you will see that is different is the new post comment link (previously you had to click on the comments, then post comment) and the new address, which is http://www.paranoidangel.me.uk/blog/diary.htm. The site feed has similarly had a blog/ inserted into it. The original address has a redirect and I've inserted a bit into the feed giving the new address of that, so you shouldn't notice much difference.

I did discover, in the course of doing that, that if you edit a post, the feed updates. Which explains why sometimes Abilon tells me old posts are unread. I also managed to fill up two pages of my site stats with me (it's handy, having a weird resolution). In theory my stats ignore me but in practice they don't. I think I can live with it somehow.

I've just been finding out this weekend about a whole load of paranoia going on a while back about people suddenly discovering that shock, horror, people might be able to read their posts on LJ! Well, ok, it's more complicated than that, but I know that anything you post on the web could be read by anyone, anytime. So I don't generally post anything sensitive. That's what e-mail/mailing lists/forums/phone/talking to people in person is for.

But, all this has meant that recently people have been changing the setting of their LJ feeds to titles only. Which is, ok, a pain in the arse because now reading posts requires two clicks instead of one, but I can hardly complain because that's too selfish.

But for anyone that's doing it and reading this can I request that:

a) you give all your posts a title, otherwise I get nothing - including nothing to click on
b) make the title something that tells me about the post - so I can decide whether to make the effort to click on it

And for information, I don't know what other blogging tools do, but Blogger allows you to decide between RSS, Atom or no feeds at all. I've also discovered it does the equivalent of LJ-cut, I'm just having a few issues getting it to work.

I did investigate changing my blog provider. I looked at b2 and WordPress (technically the same thing) which does it all with php and you set loads of stuff yourself so it's very customisable. I was tempted, except it would require loads of work and doesn't actually do as much as Blogger. I'm of the opinion, if it ain't broke don't fix it, so I'm not going to change blog providers.