This weekend's been a bit mad. After not making it to a Rotaract dinner on Friday night because of work I was still going to have a Rotaract meeting on Saturday morning. Except that it was cancelled because the other person had to work!

This morning I was happy because I managed to sleep in till 9am. Which doesn't sound like much but I did keep waking up at 8am and it was getting to 7am and earlier, even if I didn't have to get up. I was still in bed when my driving instructor phoned to bring my lesson forward - so it was just as well I stayed late at work Friday instead of going in Sunday morning before my lesson.

Last night I changed my LJ to Plus on the basis that I can't see any adverts. It took me a while originally to work out that it was because the Adblock extension was getting rid of them. So I looked at the new Expression layouts and they're very nice. Apart from the breaking in IE part. And having to change everything with CSS rather than selecting options. Plus I decided when it comes to reading my friends list when I'm away then I like the one I have now just fine. And the tags list doesn't work properly because I have parent and children categories and the only way to find anything by tags is to go to my WP blog and look that way. Not least because there are more posts and they're all categorised.

I managed to spend £13 in a second hand bookshop where most of the books are 80p. It's one of my driving challenges to drive to Hay-on-Wye and shop till I drop (the books). The boot of my car is TARDIS-like so I'll be able to fit plenty in.

One of the books I bought was Sex Tips for Girls - written in 1983 and American. It's written very much tongue-in-cheek but mostly I bought it because it fell open on the section on manners:
Read more...

OK, this is quite cool, although I have no idea what some of them are supposed to represent (and there are LJ-specific links in there so I had to fiddle so it would work).

Read more...

Courtesy of the Daily Snitch (because I never go to the LJ front page - I only ver go to LJ to comment on people's journals) some cool LJ-related things.

First, how to change the colour of the navbar, which improves it no end, and LJ Talk IM, although I wish it wouldn't add all my friends to my contact list willy-nilly. Because I already have a Trillian connection through Jabber, when I connect to LJ Talk it changes my Jabber connection icon from a lightbulb to a purple trillian one.

It is still far too hot here. The air conditioning at work could definitely be colder, except that we've closed all the doors and turned it down to the lowest possible. It's nice enough in the office but a little on the warm side. I took a jumper in just in case on Monday, I didn't need to bother.

On the plus side, I've booked my flight and hostel in Belfast (I'm flying from Bristol cos it's cheaper and takes less time to get there in comparison to Gatwick) and I've even booked for Conference and am paying £20 a month, so I shouldn't notice that quite so much.

I also seem to be continually suffering from house invasions. Last week my landlady, her daughter and the daughter's boyfriend all got back from Mexico and the daughter's wedding, so they stayed for three days and had lots of people over. I got to hear the wedding video four times. Now my landlady's boyfriend's son and his girlfriend seem to have moved in - and by moved in I mean the son has been applying for jobs round here using this address. So I'm not sure what's up with that because this is only a small three bedroom house and there were four people permanently living here anyway, since my landlady moved her boyfriend in just before she went to Mexico.

Not that writing them will guarantee I'll actually do them but still:

• Sort out my bookmarks
• Finish categorising my old posts so I no longer have any uncategorised ones
• Look at my finances, as at the end of the month I'll have a year's worth of categorised spending
• Get Melli's LJ layout into LJ format
• Get Five Things to a point where it can be betaed
• Try and do the same with the Langford U fic I suddenly seem to have started (and has made it v2 already!)
• Do some work on my Arathorn and Gilraen fic
• Do some more reviews for Sel
• Read through all the SoA stories/chapters I missed due to not getting notifications and not realising

I'll take any and all bets!

On a related note (it is, really) I love the draft setting on my printer - it's like laser printer speed! I hope it's readable, though, cos it is kind of grey. I also printed double-sided without having to do a page at a time - go me!

For how much LJ has just annoyed me. I was going to post about work for the delight (?) of everyone on my friends list but it didn't like the current time and refused to let me post. At which point I said bollux to it - I'm just posting from WP in the future.

Although I see I have been stupid - I can friends-lock posts from here.

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.

This weekend's been good and bad. I was in a bad mood on Saturday for no real reason I can find. I think the Sainsburys in Didcot has a device in the trolley to stop you taking it beyond the car park. Which would explain why I had to turn round and pull it to the bus stop and why it didn't roll back down the hill once I got there. But Tescos and Sainsburys have pissed me off. Tescos for not putting ingredients on their website and not caring, and not telling you what they've substituted/failed to deliver any more. Sainsburys for putting milk in their products and not putting it on the ingredients list (if it's below a certain percent it's entirely legal - doesn't stop it from making me ill though).

This morning I woke up five minutes before Futurama was on, which probably helped. It's a nice short, no need for brain thing to watch at 9am on a Sunday morning. A Saturday too if I ever remember it's on when I don't have to be somewhere else early on a Saturday.

The Ladies Singles final was the longest, ever, I think. But the Mens was still more interesting. I'd prefer them to make the courts fast again because serve volleying is far more interesting than watching two players hit it back to each other all the time. It's more interesting when it's us lot playing because there's no telling where it might go

I'm definitely in a better mood now though because I spoke to my dad on the phone. I was stuck on the crossword and it got to the point where he had to get Friday's paper out to find out the answers (I was doing the crossword from Thursdays paper). So I felt vindicated on not being able to finish it. Specially given that I need a thesaurus, a dictionary, google and a crossword completer to do it, when this is the one that dad used to take to the park to do when I was little, on the basis it didn't need any books.

I also just watched the last in the series of Murder in Suburbia, which was quite funny. It's an ordinary whodunnit on the surface, except for the two main characters are so funny. They do talk about men a lot (which is fair enough for two girls, really) but also because one of them really fancies the boss. But she always manages to embarrass herself in front of him. But now that it's finished my weekly viewing has been reduced to The Dead Zone, which is American and on after midnight, so I have to tape it. But then it is summer. Mind you, we get to September and there's still nothing on.

I haven't watched The Bill since Wimbledon started. I haven't missed it. I had got to the stage where I was tempted not to watch it when I was in, and tempted not to bother watching it when I was out and taped it. And given that the current storyline involves Gabriel and [censored] (where censored could be anyone, frankly, I don't care) that's a very good reason not to watch it. That, and people who I know are obsessive about watching soaps have started watching it.

I thought I'd mention about tags while I'm here. They're a new thing livejournal has brought in to organise your entries, so people can search through them for a particular thing. Blogger doesn't have them because all you need to do is google search. And since that involves far less work on my part, it sounds like a much better idea to me. Also, if I show that toolbar in Semagic it means I can't type the subject then tab to the main entry (which you think would be logical).

Edit: Of course, as soon as I post this there's an update to Semagic that means you can set your own tab order.

Avon posted a link in her journal to a site with a list of best books. I've only read 9 of the 100 on the science fiction list, but not only have I read the first one on the list, but some of my favourite books are on there. I'd debate whether some of them were science fiction, mind you. There were quite a few on there I'd like to read. And quite a few Asimov's that I'd like to like but just can't seem to for some reason.

My best is the BBC Big Read list, of which I've read 29. It does help that there are a fair few Terry Pratchett's on there, mind you

I am laughing, reading everyone's comments about LJ not being around for a day on Saturday. What I did that day was: exactly the same as if it had been up. It had that much impact on my life. I don't have a GJ backup journal, nor can I see the point of one. Mind you, I can't work out why anyone would need more than one userpic either. I only have this one so I can post in communities, and I only write in it so people can read it on their friends lists if they want to.

I was more affected by my site getting moved the weekend before and my email going down for an evening, as I was trying to plan meeting up with people. Although, strangely, LJ emails still got through.

I have now read every Quantum Leap book. The latest one followed on from an episode I hadn't seen, so I watched it last night after Tae Kwon Do. It was weird because it was series 2, Al still had the old brown handlink, and the introduction was voiced by a man, which just doesn't sound the same.

But it occurred to me that Quantum Leap is pretty much a comfort programme. Because you know it's always going to have a happy ending (apart from some of the crap they came up with in series five, but we'll just pretend they don't exist). The idea of starting off with Sam having essentially lost his memory was brilliant, because that way you can introduce his life, and Al's to the viewer as he learns about them.

I also love the relationship between Sam and Al. OK, so I also love Al's shirts. And that everyone at school watched it (we were introduced to it in RE when they did a race prejudice episode as we were doing prejudice at the time).

How did it get to be midnight? I could have sworn it was 11pm a minute ago. Must go to bed.

A multi-part post. It's quite long, so it's interspersed with livejournal to make my life a bit easier.

Firstly, the New Years Resolutions.

2004 Resolutions

2005 Resolutions

Taggart

New Year

On an entirely different note, I have discovered how to make my friends pages have no cut tags (as long as I'm logged in). It makes other peoples friends pages do the same thing and it's great! I don't read my friends page very often, but I do read other peoples (mainly because I can't quite be bothered to put them on my list) but it means I can actually read them!

I'm writing this in Semagic, which is great (I especially like the quick links thing) but I'm still going to have to put it into Blogger to spell check it, send it to lj, then change the links from cut-tags to actually links.

Oh, and happy new year everyone - may your 2005 be better than your 2004.

We were on centre court yesterday and we did see both of the women's semi-finals. And a mixed doubles match. I'm now 160th in Fantasy Wimbledon and very tired. I've finally made it through my friends list and everyone is talking about livejournal being down. Um, I didn't notice. I mean it was playing up recently but no more than usual.

This link's from Sel: How to write a best selling fantasy novel and this one's from a few people: 20 Questions to a Better Personality in which I got:

You are an SRDF--Sober Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a font of knowledge. You are cool, analytical, intelligent and completely unfunny. Sometimes you slice through conversation with a cutting observation that causes silence and sidelong glances. You make a strong and lasting impression on everyone you meet, the quality of which depends more on their personality than yours.

You may feel persecuted, as you can become a target for fun. Still, you are focused enough on your work and secure enough in your abilities not to worry overly.

You are productive and invaluable to those you work for. You are loyal, steadfast, and conscientious. Your grooming is impeccable. You are in good shape.

You are kind of a tool, but you get things done. You are probably a week away from snapping.

Some of which is quite worryingly true.

I was having a look through the Canon NO Fanon site. It was very interesting to see the sources quoted for everything but I came across the one about Elrond marrying someone after Celebrian went over the sea. Which, in my personal canon certainly, is ridiculous. However, I'd love to see it done well.

On an entirely different subject I'm off back to Wallingford tomorrow after spending two weeks at home. I remember being bored last week and not being able to remember what day of the week it was. Now I really don't want to go back. Although I am still bored - although it's not from having nothing to do, it's not being bothered to do anything. I don't actually mind going back to work so much because it won't be so busy and because new boy will be starting soon, which will be different at least. I'm not looking forward to having to do my own cooking and washing though.

The last post I wrote in livejournal first and then I realised I needed to put in a couple of links. I was feeling too lazy to type in the html so I copied it to blogger, put in the links and then copied it back to livejournal. I do keep trying to press upload file rather than insert link though - I should learn the shortcuts, that would probably help.

It's really odd that people are talking about queuing up to go to the cinema. I remember thinking the same thing when people in America queued for weeks to see The Phantom Menace. There's this wonderful new invention called booking in advance - through the internet, the phone or simply going there. Admittedly I don't go and see many things on opening weekend and those I do I book in advance. And Warner Village do annoy me by being expensive and not having reserved seating, even for busy films, so you still have to get there 15 minutes in advance.

I know this is the extended LOTR films people are talking about. Even if they were on I wouldn't go to see them - I have to work for a start. I also can't sit in cinema seats for that long. Warner Village do have very comfy seats but even then spending three hours sitting in one on Saturday was plenty. It's odd that L3 was the most comfortable. It didn't seem it in lectures.

OK rant over - I left work on time today! Actually I left early but that was to go to the doctors. And I did work through half of lunch but that was probably just because I was so used to having a short lunch. An hour suddenly seems like such a long time! It was very nice to be home in time to listen to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and catch up on last week's Buffy.

I went to see Love Actually on Saturday, I ended up accidentally downloading it last night, and tonight I printed the cover. That must be the fastest turn around ever! I'm going back to watching it now and writing some Elrond & Arwen bonding stuff. My hand's going to drop off - but in a good way (ie it has nothing to do with work for a change).

And yes, I have given in and copied this to my livejournal. I realised it had a use - the friends-locked (and other-locked) posts which I may use. Possibly. But if you're reading this in lj and I refer to a link on the left - that means its in my blog ok?

I have updated my site, but the ftp couldn't connect, so I'll try again later. Annoyingly, I don't have a photo of me with Garwin, but I'll have to ask if anyone else does. It was only when I was playing about with my photos that I realised I have to scan in the ones of me with the guests (well, JR and Chris, I have my eyes closed with Jay, so I won't bother). I'm not sure whats going on with the one with Douggie as its so bright you can't see my face. I hate giving my camera to other people, because you have no control over how the photos are going to come out.

Spent loads of money this weekend. I found Never Been Kissed in Virgin. Its strange how much the character of Sam Coulson shares with Vaughn. And then ordered some books. Had to use amazon as the internet bookshop don't seem to have two of the books I want, which is a bit shit, frankly. At least all the ones I want are out, so I can get them all delivered at the same time. And then I bought my Gatecon ticket. My credit card bill next month is going to be hideous, as the hotel bill from last weekend will also be on it!

Have to go back to work tomorrow. That's a bugger. My boss asked my on Friday (as I was leaving and was therefore tired and not in the mood) whether I was feeling motivated to get the stuff I was doing right. If course not! My only motivation in going there at all is that I need the money. Although I did get quite excited when I discovered the printer can photocopy two-sided to two-sided on its own without you having to put the paper back in at all. Its quite sad really.

I've also decided not up update my livejournal any more. I can't be doing with it really, but I'm going to keep the id in case I want to use it again, or comment in other peoples or contribute to any communities.

I tried creating one of those cool trading cards at livejournal, so of course it doesn't work with my look and I'm too tired to mess about with the HTML. Plus I'm sure livejournal is doing something strange to it. Having used blogger and livejournal I think I prefer blogger. I think livejournal is good for communty-type things, but I don't have time for those anyway. I have enough community stuff of my own going on anyway.

I can't believe the discussions on the forum going on at the moment about the kiss. I didn't like it, but that was more because of the circumstances surrounding it, and because I knew Hywel didn't like doing it. I don't know exactly why, he must have known that playing a gay character would mean having to kiss a bloke at some stage. I've also just realised thebill.com answered all the questions I had about Sean (ie they've been going out for 2 years and he's a computer programmer). Although I wouldn't call 2 years the "all these years" Sean claimed they'd been together, but still.

Tired because keep waking up early (like 8am) which is really annoying when I don't have to. Maybe I should stay up later tonight in the hope that I'll sleep later, although it probably won't work and I'll end up getting even less sleep.