There were all these things I was going to do with my week off (apart from watch/listen to a lot of tennis). I knew I’d be fine because I’d get a lot of sleep and wouldn’t have to do much.

At least, that was the theory. In practise yesterday’s random asthma has turned into a cold and sore throat. I don’t have a blocked up nose, but the rest of me feels bad enough to make up for it.

So everything will have to be wait and I’m just hoping I’ll feel well enough to go to Collectormania on Saturday, not least because I’ve paid for some bits of it already. I really wish I was the sort of person that sleeps when they’re ill, because at least then I wouldn’t feel like this.

My week off means posting more often, now that I have nothing better to do apart from watch tennis. And do all the other things I need to get done this week (Yuletide, Ch secret santa, baking, Rotaract stuff…).

I got to thinking last night about how people use their journals/blogs mostly because I keep coming across people who use it completely different to me.

Personally, I post everything in my blog (which is so much better to post to than the LJ/DW interface) and have a plug-in that crossposts to Livejournal and Dreamwidth, so people who want to read on those sites rather than by RSS feed can do so. On the extremely rare occasion I post something I don’t want the whole world to see (which is usually a rant about something/something specific and I don’t want them to happen upon it), then I password protect it on my blog and friends lock it on my LJ and DW. Anyone can ask for the password and if you look back in my blog carefully enough (or use the search, it’s pretty good) you can find the password.

When it comes to reading, I read everything, no matter what site it’s on, by RSS Feed. It means I don’t see LJ cuts and I can mark things as unread if I haven’t got time to read them at the moment. Or I can mark things as read without reading them if I know I’m not interested or know I’m not going to get time to read. I also don’t have to try and remember where I got to, like you do on the LJ friends page.

My LJ friends list is a copy of all the people I’m reading by RSS Feed. If I stop reading I take them off and if I start reading I add them on. I never use filters because I personally feel like that’s lying to people about whether you’re reading them or not. I sort of expect other people to do the same thing – so if they have me friended then they’re reading me, and it annoys me when they defriend me the minute I defriend them – it feels as if they’re too much of a coward to take me off their list before I do.

Dreamwidth is a bit different because on that one I allow access to everyone that has friended me on LJ but i haven’t friended back. That way they can see my friends entries, but I’m not reading their journal, and they know I’m not. I am subscribed to a few people on DW that I’m not on LJ because they’re the ones I’m occasionally interested in reading and I read my DW list on the site every few days ish. Course, that system falls down rather a lot because a lot of people have accounts at DW but aren’t posting there.

To conclude: My LJ friends list is nothing more than a reading list and the word friend is a misnomer.

So, how do you use yours?*

*I know it’s not Easter, but I haven’t had a Cadbury’s Creme Egg since 2004 and I don’t watch adverts

It’s that time of year again… Well, it’s a new time of year. This is the first year the ATP tour final (formerly known as the Masters series final) has been held in London. So, we went yesterday afternoon. As a result I feel terrible today while not lying down, but I have the week off, and anyway, it was worth it.

We saw Nestor and Zimonjic play a Polish pair I’ve never heard of, can’t spell and certainly can’t pronounce. They’re ranked 8, so they’re the lowest ranked pair in there. It was a bit odd because they played a variation, so when it got to deuce whoever won the next point won. And if they won a set each they’d play a tie-break, but to 10 points. It made it very quick, but it felt like it all turned on those deuce points because the Polish pair broke once per set on those points. But it was a good match and now I’m reduced to seeing the rest of the doubles matches online.

We had half an hour’s break after that and then there were a lot fewer empty seats for Murray’s match. This was back to usual point scoring and because they spend a lot more time than the doubles per point, made it seem really slow. The doubles match was an hour long, this one was two and a half. But it was a battle and Del Potro played well, apart from in the middle of the first set and towards the end of the third. That was a good match too, but we really wanted it to end because the seats just go so uncomfortable after sitting in them for the best part of five hours, I was really dizzy and it was really hot in there, which didn’t help.

But we had a good view, even though we were near the back. People at work were trying to tell me we wouldn’t be able to see a thing, but it was no different from being at the back of Centre Court.

And there are photos, some of which are a bit blurry because they’re all taken with the flash off and the lighting was terrible (really bright on the court and we couldn’t see a thing, which made eating lunch interesting).

I keep meaning to update more often but I’m just so unmotivated by everything at the moment. I think all that time reading and watching videos and not doing a lot else and I’ve got used to it. But there isn’t nothing on tonight (I’m most upset that The Bill’s off for Celebrity nonsense), so I am determined to do something constructive with my evening.

In Yuletide news I am currently reviewing the source material in the hopes that I might manage a plot at the end of it. I’m quite excited about what I’m writing and it helps that my recipient likes a lot of the same things that I do. I’m hoping that writing that will help remind me about the whole doing something constructive thing.

It’s Children in Need tomorrow, so it’s guaranteed to rain, since it’s not that cold. Normally I’d be running around in the road with a bucket before work, but I’m not well enough to do that, so I am counting money after work instead. I don’t think I can quite cope with the idea of not doing something for Children in Need any more.

I’m having a week off work next week, which I will mostly be spending listening to the tennis, since the BBC aren’t showing much. I was very excited by a twitter post of Andy Murray’s today because he revealed that he’s playing Sunday afternoon and that’s when I’m going. We’re further back than we were for the gymnastics, so expect pictures of ant-sized people.

I am most distressed my today’s paper when they announced they are discontinuing the Technology section in the Guardian. I liked it best when it was the Online section with the Science section inside, but it’s still been worth buying the paper once a week for it. Without it there’ll be no reason to buy the paper any more – and I don’t like reading the paper online, it’s not the same. These days I tend to get my news from Radio 5 on the way home from work.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for ages, but wanted to wait until I had the complete story first.

Back in January, once I’d settled in, I remembered that the last time I moved the water company insisted on installing a water meter, on the basis that I’d just moved in. I didn’t get as far as ringing them up about it before they sent me a letter. So that was all good because it costs a whole lot less to have a water meter.

So a man came round, handily the day I had off before I went to Redemption. He told me there was already a meter there, it just needed connecting. It all went a bit downhill from there… Read more…

Dear Yuletide Writer

First of all, feel free to ignore anything I’ve said in the prompts. If you can write any of those then that’ll be great, but they’re mostly just what I’d most prefer to get. At the end of the day I’d far rather get something you’re proud of than something you’re less happy with but fits in with what I’ve put down. Feel free to add in any other characters you like to these prompts – as long as the one(s) I’ve requested are in there, you can bring in to the story whoever else you like. There aren’t any characters in these fandoms that I dislike.

Generally speaking, I love stories that have an emotional punch in some way. Whether it makes me laugh, cry, be happy, be all gooey inside, be shocked etc. What particularly fascinates me, as you might have gathered from my prompts, are relationships between characters, whether they’re romantic or not. I don’t mind whether you write something shippy or gen for any of the prompts, so long as you stick to canonical ships. I’d just rather not have any sex above a PG-13 rating.

If you’re writing for one of the British TV show prompts and you’re not British, then please get your fic Brit-picked. There’s nothing likely to annoy me more than characters being out of character because they’re speaking American English when they should be speaking British English.

If you want to do more research then my fic recs can be found at this site. There are recs from a few people on there, mine are the ones that say they are recced by Paranoidangel.

Just a few notes about the prompts: Read more…

I had an MRI on Monday, which I’ve been meaning to write about all week, but it’s been a bitch of a week. So have a review of my week, including what it’s like to have an MRI (when you’re dizzy). Read more…

This is really hacking me off now and I can’t find the answer, only lots of people complaining that you can’t turn Gmail’s threading off.

I have random emails that aren’t being threaded at all. And other random ones that only thread if I keep the previous emails unread. Sometimes. This is in my RPG account, so most of the emails I have are LJ notifications. None of the non-LJ emails I get have this problem, but there are so few of them it’s hard to be sure.

I haven’t had this at all in the nearly two years I’ve had this Gmail account and I can’t even work out a pattern of why it’s happening. Someone please tell me they’ve got the same problem and it’s not just me? Or someone tell me they know the solution, which would be even better. It’s just really driving me round the bend.

Gmail’s help tells me that sometimes it doesn’t thread emails properly, which is basically a catch-all for anything that might have buggered up so they don’t have to deal with it.

I didn’t have anything on this weekend and I didn’t have to go anywhere, so I thought I’d get a few things done, housework and writing and so on. Well, I managed the first. I thought I was doing well for getting all my washing done, until I thought “that’s making a bit more of a watery noise than usual”, opened the kitchen door and found water on the floor. Which is just what you want from your washing machine. It was just the waste water pipe from the washing machine that had come out of the pipe that takes it to the drain, so it was at least easily fixed.

Recently I discovered Pidgin, which is the messenger program I use on my netbook, doesn’t belief AIM exists any more. Since I was awake annoyingly early this morning I thought I’d get up and see if anyone was in any of the RPG related chats. Which they weren’t, but I discovered that Trillian in your browser doesn’t do chat. After lots of searching on the forums I uninstalled Pidgin then reinstalled it. At which point it refused to open. But I did discover why it refused to open links in Firefox and just did nothing. In the end I installed Kopete, which I’ve decided I like far more than Pidgin anyway, but not as much as Astra.

Just because it seems to be that sort of weekend, the netbook keeps randomly disconnecting from the network (it just seems to be a common bug with it, which is unhelpful, but at least I know how to get it back on without restarting). And I watched a DVD using my computer as a DVD player and the wireless keyboard as a remote and twice the computer decided that every keystroke was actually me right clicking and wouldn’t acknowledge me left clicking. Why it decided it didn’t like the wireless keyboard today when it’s been fine up till now, I don’t know.

On the plus side, since Azureus kept disconnecting my computer from the internet (which also seems to be a common problem with Vista) and there’s something clearly not right with it, I thought I’d install μTorrent, which seems to work perfectly and looks pretty much the same.

So that was my weekend of trials and tribulations. Next week I have an MRI, a flu jab and a trip to the dentist and the week after is a trip to the balance clinic. So it’ll all be a bit medical.