Why can’t I own Englishmen?

Wednesday, May 6, 2009 ~ 3 comments so far

There was a bit of a stramash in the Scottish press yesterday, when a fairly high profile Reverend in the Church of Scotland coming out of the closest and declaring himself a big gay (those may not have been his exact words…). As many of you will already know, religion and homosexuality don’t mix very wel at all, with homosexuality being stated as an “abomination to God” by some.

Yes, don’t worry, it really is 2009.

Big Rab picked up on this news as well, saying:

The whole thing reminded me once again of the excellent “Why can’t I own a Canadian?” letter and the episode of the West Wing on which it is allegedly based. I don’t know if the letter is genuine but it sure covers all the relevant points.

I’m not going to repeat the entire thing here but it’s funny and pointed and you can read the full thing on his blog:

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

Calling all international Scots

Monday, April 27, 2009 ~ No comments yet

Spotted on the little red boat, head over there for the full details.

There’s a lovely artist I know by the name of Steve Raws, who creates things with enormous letters and colossal words. They’re very beautiful. So. He’s doing this gigantic banner of a Burns poem, that will be displayed in Edinburgh. All the information is here.

The way that Steve works is that he encourages people to get involved, and so is touring Scotland getting people to paint giant letters, which will then get worked into the banner. But he’d really really like contributions from Scots overseas as well, so if you are one, or know of any, can you pass this along? Or at least the link to the blog about the banner?

Go one, it’ll be fun!

To hell with what people think

Monday, April 27, 2009 ~ 2 comments so far

I had a long post planned but, ultimately it was really just a way to some how gain approval that buying a new iPod was the right solution.

I had planned to waffle on at some length about the size of my music library (stop, phhnarring at the back you!), and about how I listen to music at work more than most places but can’t store all of my library on my work PC and how slow and cumbersome using a separate USB drive is and how HARD it is (ohh woe is me, I know, I know) to have to sync the USB drive with the home PC and goddamn I wish iTunes had an easier way to switch libraries as I really need my own as well as a larger “everything” library and wwwahhh wahhhh wahhhhh.

And then I read this post over at Swiss Toni’s and realised just how lucky I am and all that stuff.

As the old adage goes, I might have MS, but MS doesn’t have me. I’m not going to NOT write about it because I’m worried about what people might think of it and of me. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing that MS Week is trying to change? I think it is, and so over the next few days, I’m going to write about pretty much nothing else but MS, and to hell with what people think.

To which I say, quite bloody right Mister!

When you can’t write…

Monday, January 12, 2009 ~ 7 comments so far

… write.

12 days into 2009 and my first little hiccup. The weekend offers me nothing with which to grace this blog, unless you want the fascinating tale of the one time I ventured outside all weekend, to pick up our wheelie bins as they had blown over. This led me to have wet slippers and the discovery that the sole of said slippers is slightly tapered and the join between sole and upper is almost completely underfoot in the middle of the slipper, unlike a more conventional slipper construction which would have a solid sole all the way across the sole of your foot, the join being at the sides.

Oh god. Am I really talking about slipper construction? How quickly I sink to such depths.

But then deciding to stay within the confines of the house, rather than venture outside into the howling gales and lashing rain, means my sources of blog inspiration are limited, as evidenced above.

Largely I ‘pottered’. Which means I did a little work (a design proposal for a prospective web design client), played some games on the PlayStation (ok, one game, Pro Evolution Soccer 3), tidied a little, watched TV a little, ate a little (3lb weight loss from last week!), read a little more of Live and Let Die, and so on and so and so on.

Ohh and I played with the cat.

But I’m determined I won’t resort to using the cat as blog fodder even if he remains charmingly cute and occasionally annoying.

To be fair my weekend was quietly enjoyable and if I’m honest it did actually generate a fair few topics for this blog. It’s just that I can’t seem to write that much about any of them.

I was going to discuss the blatant sexism in the James Bond novel I’m reading but then it was written in 1954 so one can hardly expect it to live up to modern political ideals.

I could discuss Pro Evolution Soccer Master League tactics, specifically who is a good buy for a Division 2 team (hint: Gouffran, Gambino, Urreta, Mezague and Beria first) but that would REALLY narrow my audience. Not to mention the fact that most of the information I have to offer is already listed in the previous parentheses.

I could cover the fact that I spent some of the weekend re-installing Windows and, subsequently, will have to spend more time re-installing the applications I use. In a way this is a good thing, it means I can clear out those that I don’t really use anyway.

And finally, I could ponder my thoughts around the idea of switching to using my MacBook as my main computer, with the purchase of a NAS drive to host my working files, media and photos but… well that’s a way off so no point in doing that.

Instead I thought I’d just start writing and see what happened and, as usual, I find that I’m quite able to fill a blog post. Sure the quality isn’t that great but a post is a post (except when it’s a page, right?).

And hey, YOU’RE still reading..

Dedication, that’s what you need

Sunday, January 11, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

If you wanna be the best, and you wanna beat the rest…
Dedication’s what you neeeeeed.

My personality doesn’t lend itself to dedication. I takes me a long time to make a habit that sticks and I’m terrible when it comes to starting things but not finishing them.

So I have huge admiration for those people who do have this ability, regardless of how it manifests itself. There are those who take pride in seeing a job through to completion, and those who manage to sustain an effort over a long period of time.

An excellent example of the latter would be the weekly “7 things I did not know last week” posts by bitful which has been running since January 2007.

Every week I learn something new from these lists too, which makes them valuable to me, and every week I ponder trying something similar. Be it a list of new information, a collation of my favourite blog posts from the week or anything else that I could post on a regular basis.

And every week I realise that, whilst I would keep it going for a few weeks, it would soon fritter out. So I never start.

However I reckon I could handle a one-off project over several weeks, something where I know there is an end, something like, for example, The Shirt Off My Back Project?

Or perhaps this is just another one of those good ideas that will fade away.

So I’m mentioning this now, here, to put a little more pressure on myself to make it happen, but don’t worry, when it does, I’ll let you know.

This and that

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 ~ 8 comments so far

Summer holidays make it easy to keep on top of RSS feeds, and easier to spot some ace new blogs. Check out this one, I think it could be quite good.

My father-in-law is back in Scotland for the month, so we’re off to see him tonight and I’m really REALLY hoping he wants us to bring in a fish supper for dinner. I’ve not had fish and chips for ages and currently have a real craving for them.

XNeat Windows Manager is yet another application capable of doing some nice UI effects in Windows. Best of all, and the reason it wins out over many other similar applications for me, is that with it installed you can MIDDLE-CLICK TO CLOSE APPLICATIONS STRAIGHT FROM THE TASKBAR. Sounds simple I know but it’s a habit I use all the time in Firefox to close a tab, and it’s been bugging me for YEARS that I couldn’t do this in Windows until I stumble across XNeat.

A quick thanks to Daisy for nominating me for a Post of the Week award, I didn’t win but was quite surprised to see my name in the shortlist. Who knows, it might inspire me to indulge my creative side a little more often (there was a similar post later on last week too).

Since I bought my iPhone I’ve changed the way I think about how I work when I’m at home, and find myself leaning towards my MacBook more often than my PC, it’s just so much nicer to use. The only downside is the small screen and limited hard drive (my music collection is larger than my MacBook’s hard drive). So I’m looking to the Belkin Flip (DVI version) as a solution.

Physio tomorrow, we’ll see if the eccentric loading exercises I’ve been doing (and for a change I’ve been pretty good at remembering to do them!) have had an impact. They FEEL like they have, fingers crossed.

Does no-one care?

Friday, July 25, 2008 ~ 1 comment so far

To my knowledge there is no Fake Gordon. This fact doesn’t disturb me unduly, I’m quite glad there isn’t a fake version of me on the internet.

However I am a little miffed that I’M not getting sent anything from some unknown stalker stranger… although, frankly, if I were, I’m not sure Care Bears would be all that welcomed.

For the record, I AM NOT FAKE SEVITZ.

If I was the address would read “FKAESEVITZ” …

Regardless, this is bizarrely funny. Bravo Fake Sevitz, Bravo!!