Interesting Things

Listen guys, I keep accumulating neat things to tell you about and forgetting to put them in my posts. So here, for your delectation and delight, is a list of Interesting Things.

First off, we have the delightful FaceYourManga, a simple, fun and versatile facemaker. This is me:

But to be honest, creating these was much more fun!:







Second we have an amazing little flash game called The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2. The physics of it feel natural, and it's charming and original. I absolutely love it! One mini-level is an homage to sonic, and despite the simplistic graphics you could almost believe it was made by the same people. Watch the backgrounds too, keep an eye out for the batmobile!

Thirdly I'd like to recommend Forumwarz. For the internet savvy among us, the terms 'emo kid', 'camwhore' and 'troll' conjure up familiar archetypes. Well now's your chance to play as one of them in the beautiful game that is the internet. By the time you realise that you're addicted to a roleplaying game it'll be too late! I'm a level 7 camwhore, and my only gripe is that you get limited activity per day unless you pay for more.

I think I'll leave it at that for now, but remember I do honestly enjoy sharing this stuff with you. Let me know if you check them out, and tell me what you think!

Morning sounds

I wrote this at the beginning of June. It was while my blog was deleted, or I would have posted it sooner...

It's late at night. The seagulls are playing outside my window, screaming at each other. My housemate's fucking some girl. Doesn't matter who, it's not about her. If that man could fuck a mirror he'd do it. There's a cat wailing at the pre-dawn chorus, and the gentle hum of my laptop. There are sounds.

The wind picks up, or maybe it's a car far off; either way it gets me thinking about leaving. I'm counting down the days until that fresh sea breeze blows me out of this ruin, this dead city. Dead to me anyway.

Nobody emails you at a quarter past four in the morning.

I look past my curtain to an inky-purple sky. Strange, that. The moment I turn my light off, I know it will change to a muddy streetlight orange. How can the same sky be orange and purple at the same time? Somewhere else it's blue, somewhere else it's grey. At this moment, somebody somewhere is watching the sun set. Or rise. Or just lying on their back listening to the stars sing.

My shelves are empty. The floor is still a mess, I still have clothes everywhere, but my books are gone from sight until I unpack properly. That might not be for months. The birds are going crazy now, singing with all the breath in their fragile feathered chests. Can they really sing with such joy and passion every single morning? Do they ever sleep in?

I sleep in when I can. Long past noon. Even when I wake up I don't move from my bed for hours, not if I can help it. I can't help feeling that if I had a dawn chorus to be part of, there'd be a reason to get up early.

But here, in the pre-dawn gloom, I hear the hurried pad of feet; somebody wants to get home quickly. And why not run? Waddle, flap, skip as much as you want. Run slowly and awkwardly if that's how you run. Who's going to see you?

How can I go to sleep when there's so much happening! I'll regret it tomorrow when I face the disappointed voice of the one man I never want to disappoint, but for now as the sky pales I like to be aware and awake again. It doesn't happen often. That's why I'm not succumbing to sleep; not yet.

While you're here, I'd like to recommend Girl Genius, an utterly fantastic gaslight fantasy comic that I've been absorbed in for the past few days. Or if you just want a highly addictive flash game, try this one out for size. They'll both be going up on my "interesting thing of the day" link list to the left, so don't forget to check that out if you've got time to kill.

Music and free food

I tell ya what, you don't realise just how many friends you have until you have to click "ignore all invites from this friend" for each one of them.

I've been meaning to recommend this site to you all for days. Musicovery is a remote control that will introduce you to new music, similar to Pandora (which is sadly no longer available to us UK types). It's good fun and I've been finding old favourites and new favourites for the past few days. Have a look!

Also, I just searched my blog, and remember I told you guys about Free Rice? (It's a vocabulary game where, for every word you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Programme to feed the hungry. It's funded by the adverts - utter genius.) Well I just discovered Free Flour - same idea, different charity, and instead of word definitions it's general knowledge questions. Spend five minutes today feeding the hungry!

Back from the island

So the past few days since returning from my beloved Isle have been... fairly dull, I suppose. So I won't bore you with that and will instead tell you about my weekend.

I was home on the Isle of Wight with my wonderfully odd family and my oddly wonderful boyfriend (whom I shall no longer refer to as the boy for the sake of clarity and suchlike). We went to Ventnor Botanic gardens which was amazing. It's one of the more beautiful places on the island, which is saying something; and because I've been there every year for as long as I can remember, I wanted to take Gavin there and show him all the pretty secret places we've found over time.

There was a point on the Saturday when I realised just how idyllic and chocolate-box perfect my childhood was. We were walking down an aisle, with the noises of some mans playing football in the field on the left, birds singing in the trees on the right, and church bells chiming up ahead. I miss my home.

Sunday was all about running through the woods shooting people with laser guns. Or in my case, standing in the base waiting for a rush that never came. I was SO COLD!

The following are various pretty pictures I took over the weekend:






Interesting thing of the day (you can now find all past ITOTD items on the left-hand column): Spin the black circle. Totally addictive, very clever idea.

7 things I approve of

I have been tagged by the boy! It is now my sworn duty as a blogger to perpetrate this meme, because if I don't they'll take my crayons. It's true.

Fortunately I've been feeling quite positive lately, so here we go! These are my seven things!

1) God. An obvious answer, usually, but lately I've been struggling. Fortunately, however big and scary and beyond my understanding He is, He's still there and still awesome and still loves me in all my pantsness, thank Him for that!

2) Strawberry splits. Ice lollies with ice cream in, what genius invented these... and then had the brainwave at selling 20 for £2 at the co-op?! I've been offering them to anyone who stands still long enough, which made my housemates happy, which made me happy. Yay for strawberry splits.

3) SPRING!! Any day now, I swear it!! The days are getting longer and daffodils are getting ready to bloom the second it warms up a little. It makes me happy, and fills me with hope, hence the positive mood... I definitely approve of spring.

4) Cardiff. I may live in Plymouth but Cardiff is my home. It's where the heart is and all that, so wish me luck / pray for me regarding this transfer! Going up there again this weekend to get my hair cut and go swimming and eat sushi and watch rugby and have cuddles. how can you NOT approve of a place that has all that, when I do absolutely eff-all in Plymouth all week!

5) Gmail. If you don't have it, get it. The spam filter is superb, the layout is ideal, the tagging and archiving and searching is an INFINITE improvement on outlook express and its folder system. I'll also add to this, iGoogle. I can check my gmail and the news and my hotmail and the weather and such all on my homepage, which given how often I need Google itself, gets used fairly regularly.

6) Adventures!! Oh man it's been so long since I've been on an adventure, I might have forgotten how! Back home I used to go for a walk in the woods at full moon in the middle of the night with my friends. Or I'd climb a cliff in high-heeled boots. Or we'd catch the bus out to the middle of nowhere and walk for an hour down a long road with the stars spread out above us like glitter. I miss adventures.
My boy's gearing up for an epic one :) I'm so proud!

7) My diary. Yes, I've started keeping a diary again for the first time in over a year. Sorry guys, I just need to write some things you can't read! ;) It's a beautiful one, not sold in England, I bought it in a charity shop for £3.50 and I loooove it.

So, in the fine tradition of meme-spreading, I tag: djchallis and Ben!

Interesting thing of the day: bunny game!

Mobular Telephonium - aka Phone Rage

In a letter to the Independent last week, Ashley Martin wrote: “Congratulations to the scientists who have developed technology that enables mobile phones to be used under water. Perhaps they could now invent technology that enables mobile phones to be used in north Norfolk.”

I'd like to propose the same technology to be trialled in Plymouth. Please. I'm remarkably patient about the terrible signal, considering what it does. Which is the following.

Incoming calls:
It rings, I answer the phone. I can't hear you. The signal cuts out. You ring again, and again, and again, until finally I have some signal and the call connects. Then it's (mostly) fine.

Outgoing calls:
Oh, it didn't work. No signal.
Oh, it didn't work again. Wait until I have signal.
ONE BAR!! GO GO GO!
...
No bars. Dammit.
Repeat until it finally goes through and pray to God that it holds while I get the Very Important Information / soothing noises that I so sorely need.

My service provider, three, actually called me once, miraculously getting through for long enough to ask how happy I was with their service. You can bet the signal got 'mentioned'.

Honestly though I think it's harder on other people than it is on me. Months and months of a crash-happy laptop have taught me to be supremely patient with flaky technology.

And while I'm complaining about this, because heavens help me I'm getting so good at complaining that it seems a shame to stop now, my phone's camera is broken. Every time I try to take a picture or video, it crashes my phone and I have to turn it off and on again. That would never have happened to my 3310 (for the obvious reasons that it only has two buttons, "stop" and "go"). I honestly think I'll get one of those fabulously retro beauties next time I buy a phone.

Interesting thing of the day: Spy Phones. Utter genius. Highly immoral of course.

HTML

I've been learning html lately, using these oh-so-handy tutorials, and it's going well for me. It reassures me to know that I can learn something entirely new to me, something that might conceivably be useful one day. And I'll be honest, I do really, genuinely enjoy it!

I had my suspicions when my boy started teaching me the occasional bit of techie info, and I'd actually remember it, understand it, and be able to apply it to other techie things the next day. So I've started educating myself in the hopes of working up to CSS and making my blog a bit more unique, a bit more presentable. There are some very attractive blogs out there and I think mine feels left out.

Interesting thing of the day: Crackbook. Click around, it's a reet laff.

Plans for Festivus

It's amazing how much I've missed in the short time I've been away. All the drama continued without me, only (according to my sources) worse because I wasn't there to calm everyone down! I completely believe it. But I say that without a trace of arrogance, because if I was really that great I'd have taught them to be sensible for themselves. Never mind, I'm sure they'll sort it out, and everyone will be talking to everyone else again in no time.

In case I don't have time to update the blog over the coming few days, this is the plan: my boy comes down to the Isle of Wight tomorrow afternoon, we will go for a meal with my friends from school on Saturday, we'll head up to his family on Sunday, spend Christmas there, go up to his friends for New Year's, then I'll come back here and then return to Plymouth. I'd much rather not go back to Plymouth.
Not because it sucks, just because I still don't belong there. Meh, never mind.

Still! Thank goodness I'm seeing my boy soon, been missing him like CRAZY. It has been... 2 1/2 weeks? My gosh. That's not really very long, although it certainly feels it. Long distance relationships are hard... it would only be worth it for him.

Interesting Thing Of The Day: The procrastination flowchart.

I'm not busy, but I should be

I was in Cardiff over the weekend, which I believe takes it to 29 days that we've spent together. <3 yay. Getting on with life, albeit with that strange nagging feeling that I should be doing something else, somewhere else. I have no idea what. Maybe it's homesickness. But in the meanwhile I'm ticking along quite nicely; eating unhealthily, not sleeping enough, or doing enough work, or praying enough or reading my Bible at all. So, yeah, I'm not miserable, but I could be doing a lot better at life in general. Series 3 of the Mighty Boosh starts tonight, woo! My laptop continues to infuriate me by blue-screening at random intervals, I fully intend to do something about it, after I've tidied my room and picked up those Pendulum tickets and bought a book with that book voucher and spent that HMV voucher and gone shopping and typed up my notes and read those course books and booked train tickets and updated the calendar... Amazing how full life can get when you're not good with time management. Oh crud, and it's Christmas soon, I have to buy presents and make cards and sort dates... Interesting thing of the day: this actually fooled me first time, I thought it was a joke. Optical illusions are neat.

Johnny the rugby-tackling alzheimer's patient

Right, I've decided to be a bit more frequent with my blog updates. I don't feel that I've got that much to say, but as we all know it's the quantity and not the quality that counts.

I have spent most of my life with tragically low self-esteem. I was, socially, a wasteland throughout my childhood - hopeless with other kids, introverted, intelligent, and convinced that I was ugly. I am by no means unique in this respect. A lot of people start out that way.

The past few years have consisted of me discovering that I'm more than that. I learned how to win people over with the bare minimum of effort (hint: be interested in them!), I put the books down and started talking to people, and I found out that I'm not Quasimodo's ugly step-sister.

I'm missing my gap year like crazy. The combination of responsibility and freedom was perfect for me; the feeling of doing something practically to help, talking to people about their problems, leading discussion groups, it was just right to push me to the next stage. I grew in confidence over that year, no doubt about it.

And now, to cap it all off, I'm loved in a way I never expected and sure as hell never deserved.

I am having quite a wobbly start at university. I'm being shy and introverted, and because of the nature of my course I'm doing a lot of reading, and I'm scared to get into the church side of things and not really sure how to go about it. But I'm not going to lose sight of who I am now; change in character is a one-way process from my experience and I'm glad of that because I really, genuinely liked who I was in my gap year. I hope and pray to have the guts to be that person here in Plymouth.

Interesting thing of the day: Plug your webcam in!

Greek mythology and bicycle sex

This uni work is making me feel a lot like Sisyphus. Every time I feel like I'm getting somewhere, that rock just rolls right the way back down again... blargh.

Interesting thing of the day: bicycle sex is against the law, apparently. Strange world we live in.

Blaaaaaaaaargh.

I don't really know what to write. I haven't written any decent poems lately for the same reason; it seems that there's too much going on in my mind and I'm a bit scared to get it all down on paper. Or on a screen.

I haven't been well lately. I'm feeling absolutely fine, but my body's been freaking out. Various people have said that it's probably stress-induced from moving to university and I think they're right - but I seem to be ok again now. Here's hoping, anyway. My family, God bless them, sent me a little box of chocolates as a feel-better-soon present.

I spent a good few hours today feeling like the world's most useless Christian because of a comment someone had made... it really hurt, really made me feel like crap. I know for a fact it wasn't intended because the person who said it is an absolute star; he called me up to talk today and had me laughing by the end of the conversation. My gosh. I really am an emotional wreck when things aren't going well with God.

I'm really looking forward to this Friday - I'm heading up to Cardiff for the weekend to see my boy. At LAST. It's been WEEKS, I've missed him so much!

Interesting thing of the day: If you've never seen this, SHAME ON YOU.
(By the way, I link to youtube videos instead of embedding them in my blog because I prefer it. Opinions? Preferences?)

The big two - oh

Today is my birthday. I am 20, and no longer a teenager.

However, I still know nothing about mortgages, and I intentionally started this post with a false sense of significance just to worry you. It's ok! I'm still me and still relatively clueless.

Being newly away from home meant that things were a bit quiet, as I'd expected, so I went into today thinking things would be normal. Which they kind of weren't. Within minutes of waking up, I'd received an utterly amazing gift from my boy that I'm still finding my way around, had a thread started about me on humanbeatbox.com, and had received two birthday cards (one from my grandparents and one from my boy's parents - not one from mine though! ;) ). Granted, nobody really knows me yet, but everyone smiles and wishes you the best when it 'comes up in conversation' that it's your birthday.

My housemates have bought me a cake which we'll share as soon as everyone's in at the same time (est. February), which is SO lovely and unexpected! And Lanky Dave (I live with two Daves, a Ben, and Michelle) said he might buy me some Baileys - which, as some of you might know, is the only alcoholic drink that makes me smile on contact.

I had a lecture that was absolutely rubbish and ended half an hour early - she was supposed to be teaching us how to use a website that a) wasn't working and b) she didn't understand. So THAT was fun.

My seminar was pretty darn good! I contributed! Maybe a little too much, which isn't a good indicator really since I haven't read the whole of the Odyssey yet. When I have I'll probably be insufferable.

And in the evening I went to my Christian Union for the first time, which was very cool! It felt like such a relief to be back among Christians, which is a dangerous and damaging thing to feel and I expect you guys to make sure I don't isolate myself away from the real world. That said, it's amazingly encouraging to have a few names under my belt at the CU already, and someone has invited me to their church. Fab!

Then I came home and talked to my boy, which (as always) made me exceedingly happy. He's coming down in three days!! I miss him a lot less than I did this time last week. I was very emo about it all, but I appear to have survived the two-week mark intact. Thank God it's not much longer, I'll say that.

Interesting thing of the day: The Man Code.

An object lesson

God occasionally teaches me things through object lessons; metaphors with something that I can see, hear, or feel.

Once a few years ago, I had a truly terrible day and I was in the foulest mood ever. I was too thoroughly miserable to go home, so instead, I went to the park and sat down in the middle of a rarely-used football field and refused to leave until God spoke to me somehow.
After about an hour, I was getting tetchy. I'd been staring at everyone to cross that field, just waiting for an epiphany to strike, but none had. Finally, sat there on the grass, I noticed a man walking his dog. I watched for a while as the little dog followed her master closely, occasionally running off to explore but never going too far. It wasn't until they got closer that I noticed that the man kept talking to the dog, calling her. I went and sat on a bench at the edge of the park and waited for them to pass me. As they did, the man said to me, "I have to keep calling her, she's completely blind!"

I was really struck by that. I had been stressing so much over my future, worrying about the fact that I couldn't see what was coming in my life, and here was a real-life parable that seemed so clear to me. I felt that God was telling me not to worry that I couldn't see ahead, and that if I just follow His voice I'll be ok. I needed to hear that.

So today, a similar thing happened. You might know that I've been struggling lately. Well earlier, I was sat in the student union bar looking at the ceiling at a light, and the light was very slowly changing colour.
I read in Velvet Elvis the other day (a great book by Rob Bell) that colours fade in the memory. They tested it, and people always made colours brighter, more vivid, to try to match the hue that they'd seen only moments before. So when you stare at a fixed colour, it becomes less impressive.
That wasn't happening here; the constant colour changes - blue, aqua, green, yellow, red, purple, blue - kept every colour fresh and bright and new. And once again, my object lesson instincts kicked in. And I realised that my relationship with God is going to keep changing because it's alive. It's an active, dynamic thing. A relationship is never something you just Have, like an ornament in a glass case; and in God's case maybe the intention is to keep me engaging with Him rather than being passive. So maybe I should stop thinking of my spiritual life in terms of 'highs and lows', but instead be thankful for the beautiful, strobing, ever-new nature of what God is to me.

Interesting thing of the day: The moon landings were Faked! No, really!! I mean it!!!1one

Starving myself

It's autumn, can you believe it... autumn already... on the plus side, the weather today was gorgeous so I'm harbouring hopeful delusions that summer was just delayed.

That's the sort of thing you can see happening though, isn't it? "An administrative problem has led to the Summer of 2007 being delayed by 3 months. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause." Fingers crossed.

Been a funny couple of days... I'm officially blonde now, not to mention the proud (and shocked) owner of a miniskirt, so there's some quite radical self-image-adjustment happening in this little mind of mine.

My little sister is having her first day at High School tomorrow... she's really nervous about it so I'm walking her in. My brother had his first day at college today, and I'm going to university soon... it's all change!

Oh man... I'm not very happy. I haven't prayed or read my bible in I don't know how long, and it's really affecting me. I spend about 50% of my life in this state, not doing nearly enough to keep myself spiritually healthy. Jesus said "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God"; and that's more than just a passing thought, it's an important truth. I've been starving myself, evidently. (So that's what the sensationalist post title was about, sorry!)

And on top of starving myself spiritually, I've been living off junk food because that's all that's in the house, so I'm generally feeling rather low.

Interesting thing of the day (and heaven knows you need one after reading my miserable moanings): A rad and random game!

iBalls

Following the success of the iPhone and iPod, and on hearing that there may be an iCar in the works, I thought I'd brainstorm a few ideas for Apple's next project. You can thank me later, Steve.

The iBall - an eye transplant that can display your email on your eye - blink activated. Comes with thermal imaging display option. Plays music.

iKnow - brain implant with access to Google, Wikipedia, and a live news feed. Guaranteed pub quiz winner. Plays music.

iDo - a stylish white wedding ring with a small "diamond" display screen. Can be used to store important events in the calender, such as making dinner, ironing shirts, putting up shelves etc. Also available in pink and blue. Plays music.

And finally, the new iWant. Not sure what it does, but it's gonna be the next big thing and number one on every Christmas wishlist. Has lots of buttons. Plays music.

Oh, and Interesting Thing of the Day: Make your own superhero!

Evil Genius

I have had a revelation. Evil Geniuses, your generic bad-guy-bosses, are being paid by the hour. That's why they seem so colossally stupid! That's why:
They take so long to capture the hero, and once they do
They like to explain their plan first
They put them in a prolonged and easily-escapable situation
They mess around with exposition.

Can you imagine what would happen if they were paid for results? They'd shoot the hero straight away. Films would never make it past ten minutes long, and the entire movie culture would die. This is why I have decided that they're being paid by none other than Hollywood studio executives.

Suddenly it all falls into place...

Interesting thing of the day: A set-up worthy of the Evillest of Geniuses.

Overthinking

So much paperwork, so little motivation. I'm just waiting for one thing, then I can get it all done. Hopefully.

Interesting thing of the day: spoof signs. Made me chuckle :)

Sometimes I say to people that if I were anyone else, I'd be jealous of me. I have a pretty awesome life. And occasionally I think about whether I might in fact be a bitter mid-40s businesswoman in the future who just paid people to invent the technology to write herself this childhood. And I'm just living that. And other times I wonder if maybe I think too much, and should just get on with it and stop being so introspective... meh. Such is life!

How are you, my beloved readership?

Reverse graffiti

What a day. Started out very well, with me actually managing to cheer someone up (gold star!), and swiftly degenerated into Issues in the afternoon. An old friend of mine got married this morning and very few people had any clue it was happening. Anyway!

Today's interesting thing: Reverse graffiti! Like writing 'clean me' on a dirty window, dust tagging is an awesome way of sending a message without a spray can. Here are some examples: car art and advertising. Yes it's graffiti, but is it vandalism? And how the heck do you prosecute someone for cleaning stuff?

My favourite reverse-graffiti story (nabbed from here):
"Brazilian Alexandre Orion turned one of Sao Paolo’s transport tunnels into a stunning mural last summer....

The authorities were certainly miffed but could find nothing to charge him with. They had no other recourse but to clean the tunnel — but only the parts Alexandre had already cleaned. The artist merely continued his campaign on the other side of traffic. The utterly flummoxed city officials then decided to take drastic action. Not only did they clean the entire tunnel but also every other tunnel in Sao Paulo."

Nice one X)