Twitter Dictionary


There’s been a spate of -based words being thrown around on of late, so I thought it would be fun (or just plain geeky, depending on who you ask) to compile a list of words that have been changed slightly to refer to in some way (or represent Tools for Twittering).  So I present to you the Whimpulsive …..Or, as referred to recently on by someone (I don’t remember who, but thank you all the same!) Twittionary.

Because of the length of this, I’ve split it into pages – a page per letter.

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I’m a parent, get me out of here…..(and other stories of woe & Despair!)

It’s been the Easter holidays for the past two weeks and, for those who have kids, I’m sure they know what’s coming. Honestly, I really don’t know how we survive it! Where I live there’s not much to do for , I certainly don’t let them out to roam the streets (my eldest girl is 6, the youngest girl is 17 months) like I’ve seen some of the parents who live local do. I don’t drive so can’t take them anywhere nice unless my other half (their dad) is off work for the day. But the has been so crappy, that even when he has been off we couldn’t go out anywhere anyway. There are a couple of parks local – one a good 15 min walk, one 2 minutes away. The closest one was built late last year in the middle of a field. And the who designed it didn’t put a pathway to it from the road nor between the play areas so when it rains (and it rains a lot in England, it turns into a boggy mushy horrible thing where you just don’t to take the kids for fear of sinking into the mud – not to mention how dirty the play areas get). The park further away is a lot better but not really somewhere to walk with lots of little kids and a as the roads are very very busy and you need a million pairs of hands to keep control of the microbitches who do everything at top speed :roll:

Anyways, we got a couple of nice days where I managed to get them to the to burn off some energy and one day where a friend wasn’t doing anything so we banded together and took all the kids to the park further away (11 kids between the two of us and that’s with me leaving the 2 youngest at home!) This week, though, has been awful. Because they’ve been home for over a week, they’re now bored out of their heads and are doing nothing but fight and scream and wreck the place. When you have one child, it’s easy enough to ignore but when you have four little monsters shrieking their heads off, and two teenagers who have turned into Kevin and Perry (think ) then, believe me when I say, you don’t want to be me! Thankfully the kids all go back to school on Monday – I can’t wait!

To add to the stress of the kids being insane, I had to reformat my laptop on Friday (amidst the screaming horde) which took about 3 times longer than it should have. Then to top it off, today I broke my blog… and it’s taken me 2 hours to repair it. On an up note, it means I reskinned it… and while it’s not quite how I want it, it’s gone 1am and I really should go to bed!!!!

So, with that said, I bid you all adieu, sweet dreams, goodnight, good afternoon or even good morning, depending on your location on our unpredictable planet!

The Energiser Bunny

That’s what my 3-year old is nicknamed.   I know at her age, most kids are a litte , but honestly…. she takes it to !  She wakes up around 6am and is on the go from the minute her eyes open.  There is no .  Everything is done at a run and at top volume!  And then there are the occasions when she is given cheap chocolate… oh jeez, it kills me!

For reasons I don’t quite understand, when she has things like own brand chocolate spread, choco snaps (their variation of ) or it sends her crazy.  You can almost see her eyes spining around in her head.  If you put sugar in her tea you get the same effect.  Yet branded (from the likes of , Nestle, Kinder etc) doesn’t appear to affect her in the slightest.  If someone has any insight into what could be in the cheap brands that aren’t in the more expensive ones, I’m all ears!

Who ya gonna call?

Well, not that’s for sure!

At school on Friday, one of the woman mentioned that she thought her house was haunted.  While cleaning the house that she planned to move into, she heard someone walking up the stairs.  At first she thought it was her , but then discovered that no one was home at the time in question.  She and two different people heard the same noises on three different days and then her husband felt someone touch his shoulder at the weekend.

Knowing I have an interest in the subject, she asked if I’d go around and check out her house and stated that if there was some kind of nasty there she wasn’t moving in.  So I arranged to go to her house at lunchtime today and have a walk around.  When I arrived I asked her not to tell me which rooms her husband had felt the touch, where on the stairs (as the staircase was split into two parts) footsteps could be heard or what rooms she and her friends had been in when they heard the noises.  I walked around the house, in and out of the rooms, noting the and then did a second circuit, stopping in one of the rooms.

As I entered one particular room, it felt like stepping from a normal room into a – a complete and sudden drop in temperature, but while the temperature was extremely cold there was no feeling of .  I told her that this was the room her husband had had his experience and she confirmed it.  I wandered around the room for a few minutes noticing that one side f the room was noticeably colder than the other.  Moving to the colder side I paced up and down then stopped at the coldest spot and told her that was where her husband had been standing.  She confirmed it again.

Leaving the room, I returned to the stairs.  About halfway up there was a corner where the stairs turned and changed angle.  Moving from one step onto this small landing there was, again, a definite drop in temperature and, moving off the landing up to the next step, it warmed up again.

I didn’t actually see anything or hear anything myself while I was there and I won’t say for certain that there is a presence, there’s a definite drop in temperature in certain points.  She doesn’t move in for a couple more days and, I imagine, once she is there constantly she’s more likely to discover something if it’s there.

It’s Official – violent video games ARE good for your health . . .

Well your anyway, apparently!

According to a issued today playing violent games like can improve contrast – which is the ability to notice very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background.  According to tests run, playing these kind of games has  between a 43 – 58% rise in the ability to see the contrasts.

Link to full report – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5070634/Playing-violent-computer-games-can-improve-vision.html

So there you have it, now you have a good reason to be playing these games – you’re simply exercising your eyes :D

How much is too much?

A couple of weeks ago while I was dropping the girls off at school, one of the other mum’s was having problems with her daughter.  Her daughter was clinging to her leg sobbing, saying she didn’t want her mum to leave her and wanted her to stay at school with her.  Usually this little girl (she’s only 5 or 6) is outgoing and perky and it’s unusual to see her quite that upset.  This went on for almost the whole week and her mother couldn’t get her daughter to explain what the sudden problem was.

Last week, her daughter finally confided in her mother, telling her that one of the boys in her class kept telling her she had “no boobs” (boobs being the word I’m using and not the word the boy was using) and that she was flat chested and was constantly being mean to her.  Since these kid are only 6 and under – the school is only small and doesn’t have any classes above that ) we were surprised that this kind of thing was being said.  When her mother spoke to the teacher, the excuse for the boys behaviour was that he was a Special Needs child and didn’t interact or socialise well with other .

Now, I’ve got nothing against kids mingling together, no matter what, but surely there are occasions when a child should not be mixing with children who don’t have special needs?  At such a young age, I would think he would be better off in a school that is actually trained to deal with or circumstances – in my view that’s better for the child <em>and</em> the school.

The same boy told the same girl to F-off the next morning in the and her mother spoke to the school once again.  She was told this time that the boy didn’t understand that swearing wasn’t right and that he didn’t cope well in exchanges with other children. . .

One has to ask, with all the PC rubbish going to such , are children who need special attention being put into in the fear of the /school etc being accused of discriminating?  The children at the school are 6 and under (as I’ve stated) at a point in life where they are easily swayed by the actions of others and, while I guess this child’s parents want him to be in a mainstream school, surely the children already there deserve the opportunity to go to school and not be abused by a child who “knows no better”.  Wouldn’t it make more sense for this child to be given the education he needs by people trained specifically for the task instead of normal teachers muddling through and other children’s school experience being marred?

Or maybe that’s just me . .

My daughters are mad!

Honestly, it’s a good job kittens are hardy little souls! Watch the video and make your own decision!

4 kids, 5 kittens

Eddie shows his caring side

As everyone knows, I’m a devout fan. While I’ll be the first to admit that his acting choices are a little suspect, his is divine. Turns out our Eddie has a sweet side too, according to the following article.

[slider title="Eddie Izzard's special gift"]

Eddie Izzard has given a private performance of his live show to a victim of the Mumbai terror attacks.

Will Pike had tickets to see the comic’s West End show, Stripped, before Christmas, but was unable to attend as he is recovering from serious injuries.

So his father, Nigel, asked Izzard if he would send a message of support to his bed-bound son at the South London spinal unit where he is being treated.

According to The Times, the comic decided to go much further, and performed the entire 90-minute routine at the hospital bedside. ‘It was a great thing to do,’ Nigel said.

Will, from Hampstead, North London, had attempted to flee the terrorists in the by climbing down from his hotel room using an improvised rope made from bedsheets. But it gave way, causing him to fall three storeys.

The 28-year-old broke three of his vertebrae, both his arms and shattered his pelvis and is still unable to move his legs.[/slider]

The world according to Clarkson

Love him or loathe him, it’s hard to ignore him. is a vocal man on many subjects – some of which he quite openly says he knows nothing about but has opinions on anyway! Personally, I’m firmly in the love-him camp. While I don’t have a huge passion for cars (I don’t even have a driving licence) I love watching for the things he, Richard Hammon and James May get up to and they make the cars interesting to hear about too.

Because of this and after reading a few of his in the Times online, I decided to pick up some of his books. The World According to Clarkson (so far 3 volumes) are full of his weekly colum from the Times spanning the last few years up to Dec 2007. You’d think, seeing as he’s known mainly for cars, that every chapter would revolve around them, but they don’t. Clarkson shares his views on everything… and I really do mean everything. You’ll hear what he thinks of numerous races and countries, airports, occupations, food, drink, music, technology, animals, politics… the list is endless. And, disturbingly, I have to admit to agreeing with a lot of what he says – as well as laughing out loud on many occasions at his dry wit.

There is an excerpt below from Volume 3 – For Crying Out loud – to give you an example of his work. I assure you, you won’t be disappointed should you pick up these books.

[slider title="The world according to Clarkson, Volume 3 - For Crying Out Loud!"]

You can’t kill me, I’m the drummer

When the BBC asked if I’d become involved in the extravaganza, obviously my initial resonse was ‘no’. I saw no reason to give up my time so a couple of could buy bigger Mercs.

But then I was told that Comic Relief money doesn’t actually buy cars or bigger power tools which Mr Mugabe can drill into his opponents’ heads. It buys useful stuff such s ambulances and help for the mentally ill of Britain.

And anyway, saying no to the Comic Relief team is a bit like saying no to the man at the Tube station with the stack of Big Issues. In fact, it’s even harder because you can’t smile and say: ‘It’s all right, I’ve already got one.’

So what did they want me to ? Wear a leotard and flail about on an ice rink? Stand in a school while chidren rubbed lumps of elephant dung into my ahir?

It turned out the offer was even worse. Would the three Top Gear presenters like to appear on a humorous celebrity version of A Question of Sport?

As I’d rather have spent the afternoon sitting on a ham slicer, I came up with another idea. What about Top Gear of the Pops? It’d be like Top Gear, only instead of cars we’d have music. And then, I said jovially, we could finish with a tune from the Top Gear band.

The Comic Relief people loved this, and commissioned it immediately. And that was great, except for one teeny-weeny detail. There was no s thing as the band.

Yes, Richard Hammond used to play bass with a band 20 years ago but gave up when, in a fit of temper, he broke his guitar over the singer’s head. And sure, James May is an accomplished harpsichord player with a degree in the science of music. But while he’d be good at Brahms and Chopin, he’s not so good when it comes to what he calls ‘pop’.

And that leaves me. I took up the drums about six months ago and have had seven lessons. I practice infrequently and have become to the world of stickmanship what Germany is to the world of Cricket.

In my heart, I fondly imagined that one day, many years from now, when I’d become more proficient, I might team up with some like-minded souls and perhaps play a small gig to a few close friends in a pub. But here I was, volunteering to make my debut, in a week’s time, in a studio full of 700 people, to a television audience of maybe fie million.

There’ s no medical term for what I was going through. Doctors call it simply ‘shitting yourself’.

To hear how he got on, you’re going to have to buy the book!

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For a weekly dose of Clarkson, visit his column on the Times website – link

The 5am Gerbil Grab

woke up at around 4.4 this morning, wanting a drink. So to avoid the low mutterings turning into 10 decibel screaming that would wake the whole house, I got up to make her a bottle. As I was walking downstairs I heard what can only be described as a scampering across the laminate floor in the living room. The first thought that went through my mind was “oh god, the cat’s got in and let the out!” So I flicked on the light to see the back end of a gerbil disappearing under the table.

The gerbils cage is in the backroom, so to reach the living room it had to get out of its cage, and come through the kitchen before getting to the living room. My first reaction was to check where the second gerbil was – luckily she’d had the sense to stay at “home” and was sitting on the top level inside the cage, peering out. It looks like the sidedoor had been pushed ever so slightly open and the gerbil had squeezed her way out.

I returned to the living room, muttering under my breath about 5am not being the time of day for chasing rodents around the house and spent half an hour enticing the stupid thing out from under the sideboard with some gerbil treats and the enticement of a cardboard tube to chew. Thankfully, our gerbils are pretty tame and don’t mind being handled so wasn’t in the least concerned when she did poke her head out and I grabbed her. I gave her a mild lecture about keeping me out of bed while she wriggled and glared at me and then dumped her back in her cage with her sister.

Bloody things! They’re both curled into a ball fast asleep now.