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Another 6 Months

Posted by on April 3, 2012 Leave a Comment

I have to admit it, I’m a terrible blogger!  It’s not that I don’t have time to make a blog post every day, not if I really thought about it, but I’m not one for just posting for posting sake and so my poor blog gets neglected for months on end because there’s nothing that really forces me to post something!  I can’t even promise that’ll change, since the likelihood is that it won’t!

Anyways, it’s been a while since I last blogged *slaps hand* but I thought since I was updating the software and plugins, I should really make some kind of update.  I think the problem is I have so many interests and I am the kind of person who likes to keep things separate, but maybe it’s time to merge some of my interests under one heading and maybe use my blog for my book reviews, ideas, etc instead of having a different site for each thing..  Definitely something to think about I feel.

I’m also supposed to be styling a new skin for a TV Discussions forum that I’ve become involved with.  I’m stuck on what colour scheme it should have, once I have that in place the rest of the skin will probably come together painlessly enough!  Not only that I’m reading the Anita Blake series of books (I’m on book 6).  I’ve heard mixed reviews on this series and am told that for a while the author does lose the plot a bit, but that maybe it’s worth hanging in there. So far it’s not bad, but I get the impression that I’m reaching that point where things start getting iffy.  I may add some book reviews over the coming days regarding the books in the series I’ve read so far.

Other than that, things are pretty normal.  Cody is feeling unwell currently, so he’s clinging to me and wanting to sleep most of the time, Admin Extra is mostly active, with the odd quiet day but it’s going well and I’m happy with its progress.  There’s not much else to report!

 

Hope everyone is well!

Filed Under: Everyday Life | Tagged:

Is the English language deteriorating?

Posted by on October 5, 2011 4 Comments

I love words.  From a very young age I’ve always had this love affair with the .  My dad encouraged this a lot and I remember sitting alongside him with a in hand trying to catch him out on the .  This game also brought a lot of words I didn’t recognise (and at such a young age probably shouldn’t have been able to say) and it turned into something more than just trying to find something he didn’t know!  I think it’s down to him that I love words so much.

This small brings me to the topic at hand.  While growing up – at home and at school – we were taught how to say and spell words in every day use, along with the odd word that wasn’t so prolifically used.  I know the schools my children go to still do spellings and reading, so I’m fairly confident that other schools both nationally and internationally do as well.  So, can someone please tell me when people stopped being able to speak properly?

I was listening to an interview on TV this morning and, I swear, every second word out of this particular girl’s mouth was “literally”.  She “literally learned to be a florist”, she “literally had to adapt to being in prison” and about fifteen other starting with “literally” in between.  And, while I’m sure she had an interesting story to tell, all I could think about was sending her a dictionary with the word “literally” highlighted and lists of the correct usage of it; and maybe a too so she could learn other words with similar meanings!  That may make me a word nazi and I’m not saying that my and even is  100% perfect, but it was irritating.  Still,  her over-use of a word doesn’t bug me half as much as hearing used vocally!

I understand the point of textspeak – when you’re faced with a limited amount of characters and you need to get a message across, it makes sense to abbreviate some words but I don’t think that excuse is acceptable when you have a full keyboard in front of you or are actually using your mouth to speak with!  I don’t know if anyone else out there has experienced this but when my 16-year-old stepson actually stood there and said “LOL”… (yes, out loud!) I really did do a double-take, followed by the disbelieving “please tell me you did not  just say ‘LOL’!”  He regularly says that, OMG, ROFL and others which I’m desperately trying to blank out of my head.

I need someone to tell me I’m not alone in my distaste for the way people are bastardising the English language.  Oh, I know (before anyone comes in with it) that the way we speak now would be viewed as wrong by people from earlier times (even 50 or 60 years ago) but I’m sure we still use words that actually are words and not constant abbreviations.  Is this what we have to look forward to?  Words having five letters or less?  I shudder to think how this blog post could have looked if written by someone who uses textspeak constantly.  Are we witnessing the death of language or the evolution of a  new version of the English language?

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The Beckham Baby

Posted by on July 11, 2011 Leave a Comment

I remember a few years ago when called her daughter Princess – I put up a blog post bitching about it.  Now, the ’s have settled on the name Harper Seven for their new daughter.  What the hell?

Okay, Harper I could probably stomach, it’s not too bad (if a little male sounding to me) but Seven?  Are they fans of or something?  Do they want her to grow up part borg and wear skintight catsuits?  I mean, okay granted, I can understand them wanting her to grow up to be as gorgeous as Jeri Ryan (the actress who played 7of9) but still……

Why do people do this to their kids?  I’m all for being different but have a bit of common sense and think about the poor child and what it’ll have to put up with during their school years with some of the names these so called choose!

To end on a positive – congratulations to the couple.  It’s weird having children all the same sex and then getting finally getting one of the opposite.. takes a bit of an adjustment.

Filed Under: Celebrity Juice | Tagged: Tagged With: , , ,

And… Breathe!

Posted by on July 10, 2011 Leave a Comment

I’ve just spent the last few hours putting all my posts back on the blog, so it’s full of my random ravings once again.  Unfortunately any comments that had been made have been lost.  But now that WordPress supplies an internal backup system, that shouldn’t be a problem if the blog breaks again :D

As I sat manually re-adding all those posts, I noticed a few so thought I’d link to them here and have a bit of a recap moment :D  Hope you enjoy them!

A Friend put it as their facebook status - this is probably the most viewed post I’ve got on this blog!

Health & Safety Is Causing an Insane World

There’s More To The Internet Than Facebook – seeing a theme here?

Twitter Dictionary – when I had some spare !

There are a few others that I think I’ll revisit by updating, so am not going to link to them.  Hope you enjoy those four   :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Forum Burnout

Posted by on July 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

I think I’m suffering from a bit of forum at the moment, although it could just be that I’ve got so much going on at home that I’m simply too tired to focus on forums.  Either way, I’m barely spending any time at all at my forum – a place that I (and the rest of the team) have spent so long building up into something we feel is something special.

 

Forum burn out sucks.   It’s so hard to find the enthusiasm  to post anything or spend a reasonable amount of time on the site, even though I know I need to – especially when I can see the activity dropping rapidly the longer I stay away, yet even that doesn’t draw me back into the swing of things.

I hope that once we’ve got everything sorted on the homefront that my enthusiasm for forums will reappear, but currently everything is just such hard work :(

Filed Under: T'interwebs | Tagged: Tagged With:

My Follow Friday Picks

Posted by on December 17, 2010 Leave a Comment

Usually #FollowFriday or #FF is done on – but of late I’ve found it hard to get everyone listed within the 140 character limit.  I was also thinking about WHY people should follow the people you list… there’s no reasons given, just a list of names along with the ‘follow friday’ hash tag.  This week I decided not to do my list on , but to blog it (and then tweet the link) that way you can see why I choose to acknowledge these people on a #FollowFriday.

So, in no particular order:-

@mattmecham – Matt is the Lead Developer of Invision Power Board – most who read my blog will know what that is, but for some it’ll have no meaning at all, so click on the link and find out!   But even though Matt is the Lead Dev at IPB, his tweets are not always business related.  In fact I’d say more are off-topic than are on.  My reason for picking Matt is because he’s such a funny guy to follow – his tweets range from informative to hilarious and extremely random.

@Mike_Ermel – Mike is an all-round nice guy (and those are few and far between these days!)  He’s also a linux nut, but I’ll forgive him that ;)

@citalan – Alan is an awesome coder and very patient with me hehehe

@AstonJ – he’s a troublemaker – I don’t think I need to say more than that!

@MadMikey – the clue’s in the name I think ;)

@CharlesWarner – Charles claims to not like Twitter much, but he’s like a bad smell – he always turns up when you least expect him!

There are many other people I enjoy sharing the twitterverse with but this week, these are the ones I’m recommending :D

Filed Under: T'interwebs, Twitter | Tagged: Tagged With:

A friend put it as their Facebook Status. . . so it must be true!

Posted by on December 5, 2010 Leave a Comment

I just don’t understand the sheep mentality of .  I’ve found that the most intelligent people forget the basic rules of the internet when dealing with statuses and claims made on – don’t believe everything you read!  The amount of people who copy and paste everything fed to them on the platform astounds me.  They do so without question (or any real reason) believing entire statements no matter how ludicrous the sound.

Because it’s a social network, Facebook is the perfect platform for spreading – about people you know, , and paedophile perverts who want to befriend you because you have a cartoon picture . . .

Scams and hoaxes perform extremely well on facebook because it seems that it’s compulsory to switch your brain off before logging into the site.

I mean seriously, take a look at what we’ve put up with so far:-

You will Nvr Txt Again After Seeing This! (Scientific Article)

OH MY GOD!…Justin BIEBER hits Girl for NO Reason!

This American GUY must be Stoned to Death for doing this to a GIRL

These are just silly links using eyecatching titles to bait the user into clicking.  Once you click, you are hit with a load of surveys – nothing exciting to see hear at all!

Some of you will probably have seen this one:-

Christmas Tree App

WARNING!!!!!!…..If you are using the Christmas tree app. please be advised it will crash your computer. Geek squad says its one of the WORST there is and it is spreading quickly. Re-postand let your friends know!

But guess what – Geek Squad ( who apparently say it’s one of the worst viruses out there) have absolutely nothing on their website about it.  Yeah, you got it.. it’s a hoax!

And then there’s all the paedophile hoaxes.. here’s two of the most recent ones.

Next Baby Competition on Facebook run by Pedophiles?

Police have advised ALL PARENTS, Please dont enter your baby into the NEXT Baby competition on facebook or any other networking site. It has nothing to do with NEXT it has been set up by a peodophile ring!! please copy and paste! It aint a joke or a random broadcast

and

Facebook Profile Pics Being Changed to Cartoons

ATTENTION! Just reported that the group that started the post about changing your profile picture to a cartoon character is actually a pedophiles group that is doing this because its easier to get accepted friend requests! Please re-post.

Come on, seriously?    Do people honestly believe that having a cartoon character as your profile pic is going to make it easier for a friend request to be accepted?  Look deep inside, open your mind.. think!

Or do everyone a favour and share these stupid things via the message system and give those of us who have brains a break from the constant rumours and hoaxes.

Thank you for listening ;)

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Tesco’s Self-Scan

Posted by on June 12, 2010 Leave a Comment

I called into yesterday to pick up a few sundries to get us by until we next do a full .  The local store has brought in the new Self-Scan system (not the self-scan tills, the actual scanners that you carry around the shop with you) so, of course, it being a gadget I hadn’t yet played with I just had to give it a go.  To sum up, I think this whole system is a big EPIC FAIL!

First off, they couldn’t scan my Tesco Club Card because it’s also a Tesco so the friend I was with had to use his (which made me lose all my club card points – the bastard ;) )  We were then instructed by the Tesco bod that we had to make sure to scan everything – if things were on offer, to ensure we scanned all items included in the offer, etc – she gave us a load of bags to bag it all up as we shopped and that was it.  So off we went and did our small shopping trip, then stood aimlessly for ten minutes trying to figure out whether we had to go to a normal till to pay or somewhere else.

Eventually we found another Tesco bod and enquired.  We were pointed to the scan-till and set off.  To reach this till you had to weave up around a very narrow path with was lined with wine bottles – and when you’re pushing a crappy Tesco trolley, it can be a nerve-wracking experience!  But eventually we made it to the till, plugged in the scanner and waited while it churned through the list of shopping.  Once that slow process was complete, the till then flashed up that we had a restricted item and had to wait for a staff member (We’d bought some WKD).  Another wait ensued while the only staff person in the Scan area faffed around with someone else, but eventually she came over, checked to make sure I was over 25, then accepted the sale.  I passed her my (in cash) only to be told that the scan system wouldn’t accept cash and payments had to be made by card and that surely we were informed of that when we picked up the scanner.  No, we bloody weren’t!  After much muttering on my part, Matt paid the bill on his card – and, incidently, he wasn’t checked for being over 25 (he’s not!) and the purchase made.

Overall, the system sucks, the staff aren’t trained properly in the use and it should be made clear that you can only pay by plastic if you want to use it.  Stupid system, not impressed!!!

Filed Under: Everyday Life | Tagged: Tagged With: , , , ,

Admin Extra

Posted by on February 2, 2010 Leave a Comment

For the last six years (on and off) I’ve been a staff member of a rather large Community .  On 5th January I stepped downrom my position there.  The reasons are many, but I do not wish to bash the site in any way, so will refrain from commenting on them.

After I resigned I received a lot of messages all saying the same thing – that i should open a site of my own, that I could bring a together.  I don’t really think I have that much sway over the personally, and I’ve never raelly wanted to go up in competition aginst the existing sites so had never considered doing such a thing before.  I don’t know, maybe it was just the right time, maybe these people’s comments caught me in the right .  But, whatever it was, I finally took that step and agreed that yes I would build a Community Administrators Resource/ and so Admin Extra was born.

I brought a team together on 6th Jan and we uploaded a vBulletin forum to our new account and set to work.  By Saturday the 9th we had our forum structure and skin in place, and started to focus on content and by Sunday 10th January 2010 we were ready to take the site live.  Within a few hours, our link had been shared and things just seemed to gather momentum.

Today is the 2nd February 2010, we’ve been open just over 3 weeks and have passed the 7,000 post mark.  Our activity and content is outstanding for such a new site.  We have interviews from some of the wellknown names of the Community world, amazing graphic downloads available free to all our members, help and support with running communities and a fantastic memberbase and staff team who have really gelled in our short time online.

So I’d like to invite all of those who read my blog (yes, we have a section solely about blogging and social networks too!) to come and join us at Admin Extra.

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Home Grown Spam

Posted by on September 30, 2009 Leave a Comment

We’ve all had them -emails stating you’ve won the lottery, or there’s a prize waiting for you so long as you send all your personal information to youthinkimanidiot@tryifyoucan.com and let’s not forget the woman/man who’s dying or died and left oodles of and you.. yes you, you lucky person.. have been chosen completely at random to receive billions of dollars (it’s never pounds, is it?) into your bank account so long as you jump through hoops.  Well, I received one today that is homegrown.

From no less than the Prime Minister, Mr .  Yes, you read that right, the PM himself has sent me an email and he’s told me that  he’s sent out a visa card with 2 million pounds on it for my spending pleasure.  I’m allowed to spend £5,000 a day with this card – how cool is that?  And of course it’s come from the PM’s personal email address… it’s a bit odd the email, mind you… being info@mail..webster.ac.th.  All I need to do to ensure I receive this money is to send my Full Name, Address, Nationality, Telephone Number, Occupation, Country, Age and Postcode to directgov@8.am and not to converse with any other person or office to avoid any hitches in my receiving this payment…. and it’s signed… yes… SIGNED .. by Rt Hon. .

Don’t believe me?  Here’s a copy of the full email below.

OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

TREASURY AND MINISTER FOR CIVIL SERVICE, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

Our ref: ATM/13470/IDR

Your ref:…Date: 30/09/2009

IMMEDIATE PAYMENT NOTIFICATION

I am The Rt Hon ,Prime Minister British Government. This letter is to officially inform you that (ATM Card Number 048000101775550) has been accredited with your favor. Your is 477.The VISA Card Value is £2,000,000.00(Two Million, Great British Pounds Sterling).

This office will send to you an Visa/ATM CARD that you will use to withdraw your funds in any ATM MACHINE CENTER or Visa card outlet in the world with a maximum of £5000 GBP daily.Further more,You will be required to re-confirm the following information to enable;The Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. begin in processing of your VISA CARD.

(1)Full names: (2)Address: (3)Country: (4)Nationality: (5)Phone #: (6)Age:

(7)Occupation: (8) Post Codes

Forward Reply To: directgov@8.am

TAKE NOTICE: That you are warned to stop further communications with any other person(s) or office(s) different from the staff of the State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to avoid hitches in receiving your payment.

Regards,

The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP

Prime Minister

Of course, only a fool would fall for the above email.  Or I’d like to think that to be the case.  But I do have to wonder how many people do actually fall for these things and end up out of pocket themselves.

Filed Under: T'interwebs | Tagged: Tagged With: , , ,
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