Grand night at the Poet & Patriot last night. Drank booze and listened to a trio of guitar, guitarron and fiddle, which was well pleasant. A good reminder to have another go at the violinning. anyroad, i’ve been surfing the information superweb again and found flickr.com- a photo sharing site, you can put in a keyword and it will dish up other people’s photos with that tag. So i started with ‘Santa Cruz’ and saw lots of nice photos of beaches and all that, then i tried Taunton (my home town), just on the off chance and lo and behold This bloke’s taken a ton of photos of everything from Virgin Megastore to Bath Place to Hankridge to Vivary Park and it’s the same bloke who has a load of Santa Cruz pictures on the site, Chris Lewis from Davis, California. i thought that was weird. What are the chances of that happening, eh? i left him a message on the site… I have to know what he was doing in Taunton, on his own, with a camera, taking photos of everything, probably for about 4 hours. He must have had his own transport to get to Hankridge, the xmas decorations are up so it’s November/December time, there are photos in the dark, but it probably gets dark around 4:30 and the shops are open (so it’s before 5)… He’s posted every single photo he took so you can look through them and see exactly what he was up to, here he’s gone up the multistorey car park, then he’s taking pix of arthur’s sword in front of the Winch/ Castle. It’s gripping. Anyroad, I like this Flickr site it’s like picking up the wrong set of photos from the developers, only with the other person’s permission. Grand.

Who will buy my lovely books? here’s the ad on craigslist. Actually, i’d only recommend anything by Douglas Adams, and maybe Holes. It’s worth a try though…
The dog’s been quiet for 20 minutes now…

Depending on the timing of a meeting next Wednesday I might be doing a 1 minute TV announcement for PAPAS which will take an hour to film. If I’m not available then Miguel might do it instead, we’ll see. Whoever it is will find themselves on local community TV twice a day for the foreseeable future. And since I’m receiving 2 dollars a week (you were right about the higher living expenses, Jesse) to record to my viewing habits, I’ll be able to improve their ratings in return.

Went to see Bad Education last night with Sita. A very good film that (4 Lulus). Click here or in the media box on the right for my full review. I thought Gael Garcia looked like Prince in lots of scenes, and then this bloke turns up who’s the spitting image of Frasier. See below.

Chats with Mum and Nanny this morning. Mum and Dad are having a party with 9 guests or so which is more rock-and-roll than my anything going on my life these days. Their second one in a week, no less. Mum was checking on the parsnips as we talked. Even me Gran has a busier social life, though she’s having a lie in tomorrow because her usual lift to chapel is in Florida. Anyroad, I ran out of phone power but a call to me little sis and Ali is on the cards, i have to thank them for all me birthday pressies- I got the first season of Futurama from them too t’other day. There’s quite a lot on me to-watch list, but I’ve hardly had the chance… Marion & Geoff, Futurama, Director’s Commentary. cos I’m doing this TV rating thing I feel I ought to actually watch real TV for a week or so, but so far i’ve only seen The Antiques Roadshow , 10 minutes of The Apprentice and Jon Stewart. There’s no space to put Harry Hill’s TV Burp. I also have to check in with bert who is starting to get specific about plans for him and his dad coming for a visit in April. Which’d be grand. Also haven’t spokent to Stu and Anne since Jan 17th when they had me on speakerphone in some kind of hand held device which led to all kinds of confusion. They were round giving the 411, as they used to say over here, on their travels in the Orient in slideshow form in to impressed onlookers at me folks house last thursday…

Atticus hasn’t stopped barking since Sita left 2 hours ago to watch a basketball match (game?) in Stanford with Tanya (and to pass by Ikea). Atticus is not in my good books right now. He’s actually in the book entitled “Things that eat toenail clippings, drink from the toilet and puke in our living room”. (Which only gets 1 Lulu). So he’ll be wanting a walk then. Well he’ll have to wait till I’ve tidied the house a bit first and then he can drag me off to the sea.

I’m designing a brochure (& web site) for a Central-American Reproductive Health Training Program and I ended up using Papyrus font for it. I feel a bit ashamed after lambasting it so often for its ubiquity in the non-profit world. It’s such a lazy option to convey touchy-feely Santa Cruzy feelings.

Ah well, just shows I can be bought… for $32 an hour no less…

it was server problems after all… So that’ll be the Terry Pratchett interview for the journey to work tomorrow.

i’m a little nervous that YouKayNova‘s not returning my internet calls right now. I’ve grown to rely on it for radio programmes on the way to work and back and for the occasional sly telly program. It doesn’t have any torrrents for programs available commercially, and I paid my license fee. way back when. I hope it’s just server problems and it’s not ‘ceasing and desisting’.

MSN’s spanking new search engine has me indexed first on a search for gwyn fisher even without the quotes. Which is nice.

Had a gorgeous walk down by the beach today- fantastic sunset, sizeable waves and sea lion serenades. Sita + Tanya + Atticus also joined in the fun.

Bunnies are still the #1 searched for item, but ‘banana slugs’ have fallen 6 places to number 8, maybe cos it’s so easy to find them out in the wild this month. Sita’s googled herself 5 times… same as last month (incidentally, she’s Sita from now on, so potential employers don’t find this page). ‘Collage idle’ is a new one on me, i’m thinking that maybe some country has a “College Idol” program running (like American Idol or Pop Idol) and the audience can’t spell. bunnycam’s gained in popularity, shame it hasn’t been working for 6 months or so now. a “brit of trivia” is also a new entry. did you ever notice i spelled absorption wrong in the title of this blog? well, it’s a deliberate ploy to get traffic from other spelling-challenged internauts. Two hits for schipperke blog… and I hope the people searching for “the photos you’re not supposed to see” weren’t disappointed when they arrived on whatever page they got to. Still waiting for a googlewhack. you’d think ‘schipperke atticus’ would do it, but there’s 127 hits… Anyroad, those numbers in full:

1 20 16.53% bunnies
2 11 9.09% collage idle
3 5 4.13% s*rita gayt*n
4 4 3.31% bunnycam
5 4 3.31% serena.jpg
6 3 2.48% fisher family photos
7 2 1.65% a brit of trivia
8 2 1.65% banana slugs
9 2 1.65% blog gwyn
10 2 1.65% brit of trivia
11 2 1.65% family familia
12 2 1.65% herbivores
13 2 1.65% london pix
14 2 1.65% schipperke blog
15 2 1.65% self absorbtion
16 2 1.65% slugs
17 2 1.65% summary of the novel klepto
18 2 1.65% the photos you’re not supposed to see
19 2 1.65% valerie quandt
20 1 0.83% ‘denise dunning

and 40% of browsers use Firefox. If you’re not using it yet, you’re really missing out. I’d sooner go back to dial-up than IE. Don’t make me choose though…

Other news: Monarchs: 21 Coffeetopia: 29

Bunnies are still the #1 searched for item, but ‘banana slugs’ have fallen 6 places to number 8, maybe cos it’s so easy to find them out in the wild this month. Sita’s googled herself 5 times… same as last month (incidentally, she’s Sita from now on, so potential employers don’t find this page). ‘Collage idle’ is a new one on me, i’m thinking that maybe some country has a “College Idol” program running (like American Idol or Pop Idol) and the audience can’t spell. bunnycam’s gained in popularity, shame it hasn’t been working for 6 months or so now. a “brit of trivia” is also a new entry. did you ever notice i spelled absorption wrong in the title of this blog? well, it’s a deliberate ploy to get traffic from other spelling-challenged internauts. Two hits for schipperke blog… and I hope the people searching for “the photos you’re not supposed to see” weren’t disappointed when they arrived on whatever page they got to. Still waiting for a googlewhack. you’d think ‘schipperke atticus’ would do it, but there’s 127 hits… Anyroad, those numbers in full:

1 20 16.53% bunnies
2 11 9.09% collage idle
3 5 4.13% s*rita gayt*n
4 4 3.31% bunnycam
5 4 3.31% serena.jpg
6 3 2.48% fisher family photos
7 2 1.65% a brit of trivia
8 2 1.65% banana slugs
9 2 1.65% blog gwyn
10 2 1.65% brit of trivia
11 2 1.65% family familia
12 2 1.65% herbivores
13 2 1.65% london pix
14 2 1.65% schipperke blog
15 2 1.65% self absorbtion
16 2 1.65% slugs
17 2 1.65% summary of the novel klepto
18 2 1.65% the photos you’re not supposed to see
19 2 1.65% valerie quandt
20 1 0.83% ‘denise dunning

and 40% of browsers use Firefox. If you’re not using it yet, you’re really missing out. I’d sooner go back to dial-up than IE. Don’t make me choose though…

I was listening to The Adam and Joe Show on XFM which I burnt for myself off of YouKayNova.com and it got me all homesick again. They were talking about telly and countdown and the new series of ‘look around you’ and there were adverts that were vaguely amusing and they played proper pop songs and stuff I hadn’t heard before but wanted to know more about and had irreverent conversations about things that don’t matter and the prices were all in quid and and and and. anyroad i’m missing Somerset’s green and pleasant charms. {{popup kingstonarialview.jpg kingstonarialview 390×267}}Here’s an aerial view of me village about 5100 miles from here…
& had a tough day at work… to top it all off.
moan, moan, moan. Here’s a fun link to reward you for reading all that rubbish. Guess the dictator or sit-com character. It took about 20 questions to work out I was Daisy from Spaced then 15 to divine that I was Generalisimo Francisco Franco. The days simply fly by…

I’d have put mindless action films a little higher, but otherwise, pretty accurate. I liked the ‘questions’ on this one, have a ganders.
Read More “‘Sadistic Humour’, Apparently”

Swedish disaster site.

In the post below, there’s a link to the Face Transformer. I feel like an evil soothsayer has just told me the date I’m going to die on, all I did was click on the “older adult” option. I dare you to try it and not start thinking about about your skin care routine. I hesitate to post this link.

I’m thinking of phoning…

More HERE… Happy weekend
Off to Oakland soon to catch up with Meg, Matt, Monica, and the non-alliterative Daniel soonish. And not before time, neither.
b3ta.com‘s weekly round-up of internet nonsense included a link to this Face Transformer– you upload a picture of your face and then tell it to morph it into ape, child, drunk, or (below) boss-eyed-beardy-manga-man among others.
. Email me any good transformations and we can have a guess-the-nerd competition.

I got a call last night at around 8:30 from Scarborough Research who were keen to know all about my radio listening habits and newspaper reading. They probably couldn’t have found a less representative person to ask, especially since in the last week to and from work i’ve been listening to cds of The Mighty Boosh rather than the usual NPR and BBC. Anyroad, they’re going to send me more questionnaires to fill in about TV and internet use and let’s see if I can’t influence American broadcasting for the better. Somehow I’m going to try and get Angel back on, have repeats of Just Shoot Me just when i get home- 5:50, The Daily Show scheduled at 10pm. I’m going to say I change channels whenever I have pharmaceuticals advertised at me too. Ah, the power I shall wield… If anyone else has any suggestions, let me know, hit the “0 comments” link below- Cheers, gwyn

‘I don’t like Monday 24 January’

Here’s photos from this morning’s expedition with the dog. You may wish to skip the black-and-white-birds-on-telegraph-wire ones, I got carried away again. Nice to know this ind of landscape is all within walking distance of the house.

Sita’s area of research for her PhD is the commodification of identity or the identity of commodification or some such, it all goes over my head really, anyroad, basically she’s studying tequila and its image. So this limited edition bottle we picked up yesterday from Shopper’s Corner should be worth a paragraph or two.
More DVDs arrived yesterday- Spaced Collector’s Edition and Nick Frost’s Danger 50,000 Volts. Great to watch Spaced again, but not as good as watching them round bethan’n’ali’s. Maybe it was the company, maybe the jaffa cakes, maybe the stella artois, or maybe all three. ‘Adam and Joe Go Tokyo’ was grand, they’re looking old though. Found some of their songs from the Adam and Joe Show here. My favourites’re the Robert DeNiro calypso, it’s been going round my head since I heard it again and the Bob Hoskins ‘How’s yer father, have a banana, etc.’ one. Enjoy!
I’ve been looking around some Massachusetts blogs and it’s been snowing there. i miss the cold weather and the attendant cancellations of classes, work, travel, etc. A ski trip to Tahoe is in the initial planning stags though, and they had 25 feet of white stuff in the last storm.

Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes and such, much, much obliged, big up to the pan-global massive, my peeps meg, matt, bethan, ali, mum, dad, nanny, grandma, tanya, juicy, bert, stu, anne, annelise, amy, stu’s parents+ others. 30’s treating me okay so far. I just got b’n’ali’s pressie, a DVD of Marion & Geoff series 2, and watched an episode last night, and it looks like quality entertainment. Also listened to the first CD of ‘The Mighty Boosh’ which is an education in itself.

Anyroad, felt I ought to blog. I can’t really carry on with the narrative about the weekend from the last entry (below), but I can tell you that Sita’s netball team lost but she was a star in the game especially considering she hadn’t played since she was 15 or so. “Go Monarchs!” as i couldn’t quite bring myself to shout on monday. I would have felt weird taking photos of the all girl teams so here’s a couple of photos of moody santa cruz mountain snaps. and another.

I was starting to feel guilty watching so many Strongbad cartoonswithout sharing the joy. Thanks to Annelise for the post in her blog ‘and if you are feeling down, there’s always Strongbad’… never a truer word blogged. Never fails to cheer me up.

In other news, if you’ve been following the ‘hello Swedes’ plotline in the blog. I’ve finally found out who it was since they put a pin in my Guestmap. Apparently Austria sub-contracts their ISPing to Sweden. Hello Mike, if you’re reading. Good to know that’s two people from Kingston St. Mary who blog. We should set up a web ring. Blogging Link Up Readers or summat.

If you’re a regular and haven’t shoved a pin in the Guestmap yet, please, pretty please, have a go. I can offer up Gmail account invites for the next 5 brave pioneers. (& let me know if you’re interested, Michael)