* Grab the nearest book. * Open it to page 56. * Find the fifth sentence. * Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions. * Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
One question almost every dog owner asks is, “How do I keep my dog from jumping up on people?”
From Dog Training for Dummies. (page 56 was blank, this was 57)
It’s 8pm, I rarely post in the evening, but I’m hiding out in the basement…
Luckily I had the foresight to nip to the supermarket and stock up on skittles, kitkats and starburst (coincidentally, all the sweets I like) a few hours ago… Boba Fett Jr, some Princess or other and Batman are among many others that have been round our house this evening. Atticus was initially apoplectic that so many strangers were wandering the streets after dark and daring to approach the threshold of his realm. He seems more resigned now. I know the feeling.
DrSita’s in Denver at the minute. I’m picking her up from the airport at midnight tonight. I just texted her to say I can’t get the hang of this gringo tradition thing. By the third visit, I realised I was doing it wrong and you don’t say “Good luck” to a five-year-old. You say “Happy Halloween” (no apostrophe, ‘cos we’re in America). And the stress is on the ‘a’… “Hálloween”, not “Hallowéen” (UK)…
Anyroad, have a collage of some of my latest Through the Viewfinder shots of some skellingtons from Mexico. And if you’re feeling particularly masochistic, wade through my latest pix of a walk round Peter Kerr Park down the road. I spent a while thinking up some decent puns for some of the titles.
Pero el día que yo me muera, sé que tendrás que llorar
I won’t write too much about the interview, ‘cos there’s a good chance I’ll be googled and they’ll find this post if it went well enough. On Facebook I put in my status that I was wondering what to wear and received sartorial advice ranging from optimal tie patterns to clingfilm with strategically placed Sarah Palin stickers. I then announced I was going to wear my Ghostbusters T-shirt and got these words of encouragement…
The best thing was the ghost GLOWED in the freakin' dark
Alan: Best of luck, Gwyn.
Stuart F: Who they gonna call?
Joop: Did someone give you the questions?
Paul: dont get slimed
Alina: You gonna be a ghostbuster and all?
Emma: definatley the best choice of attire for, well, any occassion. be sure to mention in the interview that you “aint afraid of no ghost” in your best english accent
Annelise: Good Luck!
Ricardo: Are they going to ask you to take the TOEFL?
Facebook is often a lot of fun…
Other news. DrSita’s in North Carolina right now. Apparently in the airport there’s a mexican restaurant called La Tequileria or somesuch. News of her adventures soon…
Cut and paste: agaveweb.com/tequila to see a site in progress for some mates of mine in Guadalajara and their new language school.
I’m starting a new photoblog just for my Through the Viewfinder photos. I’m at the design stage right now. Because of the number of strange looks I get when I’m wielding my dual camera contraption and the occasional person asking me what it is, I’m thinking it’d be handy to have a business card with the site on it so they can see (buy??) the photos and learn more about the technique. Might take a while though, but I want to get something up because the other day I won 1000 free business cards and I need a domain for it. Any suggestions for a domain name? IsThatAPeriscope.com …
Our friends Gina and Evan had us round for dinner the other night and showed me their dual lens camera. Since they don’t make film for these things any more the idea is you take a picture with another camera Through the Viewfinder (Ttv) of what it sees. You end up with slightly distorted, vignetted, dusty, square images that are really pleasing to the eye. I was inspired and bought the first camera I saw on eBay. It’s been a while since I used eBay and my original bid of 5 dollars was soon outbid and I got caught up in the competitive bidding and finally snapped it up (pun intended) at the last second for 20 bucks and it arrived today. You can probably get them cheaper, but what the hell…
The next step after cleaning the lens and mirror a bit was making it light proof, there’s a tutorial on how to make a perfectly fitting tube, but I couldn’t be arsed with all that… I ripped up the box it came it and went into a sellotaping frenzy… 10 minutes later… behold!
The Kodak Duaflex IV/ Pentax K110 Chimera
Next step is wandering around seeing things from a waist-high angle for a while and getting used to the mirror image while Drsita and Atticus look on bemusedly.
To make a long story short, I’m very happy with me new toy.
Other news… we’re looking forward to Sally and Martin’s visit in a few days. Had a lovely weekend and met the neighbours properly. And still no major news on the work front.
This is Herman Dune, they were the support band at last night’s Jolie Holland gig. Right now I’m going through the pics from the concert and editing some from our jaunt out to Peter Kerr island this afternoon. Brilliant place, it is. Plenty of colour, the (unrealised) possibility of bald eagle spotting and Atticus even got a wander around off his lead.
I applied for 1 job and 2 gigs today… The job is for temping with more localis(z)ation stuff with UK English for which I’m eminently qualified. The gigs are for web design stuff which I’m qualified for but competing with hundreds of other people locally and internationally in the middle of a deepening economic disaster. Fingers crossed one of them’ll bear fruit.
Also picked another radish from the garden and took some pix…
Im in ur economic downturn, stealin' ur cheez
Righty, off to Starbucks for a coffee. I just received my latest $5 from filling in surveys on how much I hate US Cable TV at epoll.com …
One of the sessions I enjoyed at WordCamPDX last week was on “Tying your tubes” about funnelling all your internet activity into a “lifestream”, a list of your activity on various social sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Google Reader and the like. The main thrust of it was how to include it in the sidebar using a couple of plugins, but I reckon this blog has enough going on in the sidebar without any more clutter… so, if there’s nothing much to hold your interest on this page, try the brand new LifeStream link on the top right to see what I’ve been uploading/favouriting/sharing around the interwebs. There was all kinds of things to do with Twitter too, but I still can’t work up the energy to tweet regularly. It’s all I can be arsed to do to tell Facebook what my “status” is every few days.
Also, if you were thinking this blog is taking even longer to load these days, it might be because I added a weather widget to the left sidebar. So if you’re wondering how wet it is today in Portland, scroll down a bit and on your left you’ll wonder no more.
This morning we went to the Farmers Market on the PSU campus downtown. I think Mum and Dad were doing something similar in North Petherton. But I’ll bet there weren’t any monkey heads on sale there…
My kind of recipe Posting direct from Flickr… Here’s Nostromoo‘s 2nd batch of Welsh Cakes… and evidence of probably the first time anyone has printed my blog out on paper.
I was looking around friends’ blogs for inspiration today (cos I promised to post more often even if I’ve nothing much to write about) and I remembered Flash had recently unearthed the Things you love beginning with… meme. Way back in 2006 I got W. This time (via Skype chat)…
[8:37:38 AM] Gwyn says: Oy, Flash! Give us a letter for that meme. You gave me a W last time and I need some inspiration. (thanks 🙂 ) [8:37:59 AM] Flash says: you want a different letter? [8:38:05 AM] Gwyn says: yep [8:38:11 AM] Flash says: *thinks* [8:38:17 AM] Flash says: P [8:38:20 AM] Gwyn says: yay! [8:38:20 AM] Flash says: ok? [8:38:21 AM] Gwyn says: thanks [8:38:24 AM] Flash says: np!
10 things I love beginning with P:
Parents, Phoning home
If it weren’t for skype, cheap international phone calls and the internet I wouldn’t be living so far away from home. Hi Mum & Dad!
Mum and Dad dans les Antibes... récemment. Photo by Jill Lisk I think.
Photography (+Picasa)
Here’s one from the other day. It looks like an apple, but is actually an acorn.
Fell
Chose focal black and white in Picasa’s options menu, waved my magic mouse and uploaded it to Flickr. Photography is one of the most rewarding hobbies I have, not just taking photos but admiring and being inspired by other people’s too. Also it brings you little moments to treasure like Atticus finally overtaking “Dead Horse” in the LA Times and being the 2nd Best Animal at time of writing… I promise I only voted once. The votes have nothing to do with the judges so here’s hoping he gets printed in the LA Times paper edition this Sunday…
Potatoes
I could live on these exclusively for months. Like I did through most of university. I reckon the antiscience hicks have it all wrong and that spuds, rather than bananas, are the real “Atheist’s nightmare“…
Planting stuff in the jardin.
I won’t call it growing veggies just yet. That would be premature. I enjoyed the actual planting, even if the resulting rows of slug-eaten greenery is not (and may never be) fit for human consumption. The herbs’re doing grand though and the dandelions are thriving.
Peep Show
The facebook group has it about right: “If you don’t like Peep Show, you’re probably not worth knowing.” Harsh, but fair.
Pratchett, Terry
and his lovely discworld series. I started reading them when I was 13 or so and have read them all in order ever since. They’re enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the minute round here as Powells Books has a fair few used copies on sale. I’m still patiently waiting for Making Money to come out in paperback Stateside.
Pasties & al Pastor, Tacos
I’m going to have to get back to Mexico soon if only to gorge on Tacos al Pastor again.
Pasties are also missed, though we had the Chilean version round a colleague of Sarita’s house the other day, empanadas. Lighter pastry, an olive, egg and raisins got added to the recipe when it travelled south. Wikipedia has some handy pasty facts… “It is said that a good pasty should be strong enough to endure being dropped down a mine shaft.”
PCs
Yeah, they crash occasionally. Yeah, some of my drivers stopped working with Vista. Yeah, Microsoft… But when PCs go wrong I can usually fix them, swapping out some part for another cheaply bought one, or messing with the registry. When your Mac goes wrong, it goes wrong. Usually in spectacular/ expensive fashion.
I got my first PC from Drsita’s dad, Martin when I started at UMass in August 2000. I’d probably still be trying to teach Spanish to spoilt teenagers now if it wasn’t for him.
Parks
Parks are good. They used to be for drinking cider and playing guitar in, now they’re for being dragged through by a 25lb + schipperke.
Pubs
Though it turns out it’s not the place, it’s the company. Still working on finding some Portland pub peeps.
Posters
I seem to be making lots of posters lately. Here’s today’s…
It’s been a busy week for me and Drsita, though I think S worked harder than I did. She’s had her usual lectures, meetings, office hours & job applications going on and also yesterday gave a 45 minute presentation on tequila and gender involving various Lucha Reyes clips.
Message in a bottle flyer
And we’re glad it’s the weekend…
So last Friday I had an interview for a job as a UK English localisation tester and that came through. On Monday I was testing a training program about EU Competition laws and Thursday and Friday I was recording all instances of organization (rather than organisation) and suchlike in a proprietary course management system. A lot like Moodle but infinitely more expensive. There’ll be more on Monday then it may well dry up for a bit.
I’ve been making DVDs for Drs. Sudarat & Sita. Working on theming a Volusion e-commerce site (I’ll post the link when I finish) and a 12′ banner for a friend selling camping gear for festivals. Putting together the first non-WordPress site I’ve done in years (link soon “Marketing Gestalt”…) Updating nourishingnutrition.com , lorrainepursell.com , comfortmattressfurniture.com . Finalising pink-caterpillar.com. And all the while clicking over to the LA Times site (which appears to be down today) to see how Atticus is faring in the popularity contest. He needed 3 votes to overtake the picture of the dead horse last time I checked…and watching my adsense pennies pile up.
Here’s my logo for the camping thing…
Cusifer’s in the dog house after his behaviour over the last couple of days. First off, on Wednesday we barbecued some veggies and while I was sorting them out inside, he made off with two thirds of my baked potato with cheese that was sitting on our garden table. And was very reticent to give it back. I wrested it off him and he sulked for the best part of 3 hours. As punishment, rather than his usual treats I gave him slices of said potato for the next 48 hours (If my baked potato is all that you want, baked potato is all you shall have…) Which may well have been the trigger for finding he’d been unable to contain his bowels on Friday night and gave me a fine way to start Friday.
Changing the subject… I finally finished watching The Wire Season 4. I think it’s been noted before, but it’s the best damn drama available on the planet. I can’t stop thinking about Bubs. Bless him. After season 5 it’s going to be hard going back to normal telly. I’ve found there are presently 4 reasons to subscribe to basic cable. And 2 (possibly 3) of them are freely and legally available online. The Daily Show, Colbert Report, The Soup and America’s Funniest Videos. The first two package US news in a palatable form. The Soup reminds me why there’s no point in watching anything but the aforementioned 4 programmes. And America’s Funniest Videos is perfect for watching while eating. Zero plot, zero thought, and 100% people falling over/hurting themselves. The cream of a country of 300 million all with easy access to a camcorder.
Here’s a picture of the sculpture by the PGE stadium next to where I’m working…
I’ll try not to let a week go past again before the next post… Here endeth the stream of consciousness.
First picture I ever uploaded to Flickr? It was this one 3 and half years ago.
Mexico’s having a national Flickr convention in Guadalajara tomorrow. Flickrites are flying/bussing in from all over and converging on GDL. All my mates’ll be meeting up, wandering round with cameras, meeting interesting people, sharing photo ideas, techniques, badges, possibly T-Shirts… and trying to sort out hugely complicated bar tabs. I wish them all the best. And am just a little jealous.
A whole new browser and Picasa 3.0 beta, all in the same week? Didn’t they just launch a spy satellite too?
People don’t come here for tech reviews, so suffice to say Chrome is fast and well worth installing. Picasa continues to be a delight. I’ve got it tied up making a video slideshow with music and automatically uploading it to YouTube, but apparently there’s all kinds of other stuff too. Collages, proper image editing (removing blemishes), erm, slideshows again. I’ll edit this and post the youtube thing in here in a minute.
What else? Well, ever been in a cybercafe, desperately wanted to see pictures of Atticus and find out what I had for breakfast, but then forgotten what the address was of this site? something to do with tequila, spiders and logs? well, now gwynf.com will get you here in half the time. I found a coupon for godaddy (TEST99 if you want to try it), $1.19 for a domain for a year and it had to be used up soon, so there you go.
