PigPog

Siberian boy ‘brought up by dog’ : Onlypunjab.com: “He was running about on all fours and growling. They thought he was playing at first but the house is miles from anywhere and is little more than a ruin, and he was really dirty and naked, so they realised something was wrong.”

While stuffed up with cold, feeling like crap and knocking back the lemsip as though it’s the nectar of the Gods, I thought it might be a good time to look to the positive and list the many reasons I have to be happy.

I have, by far, the best partner on planet earth.

I know you might think yours is the greatest, but mine really is. For him, flowers and chocolates are not the only ways to say ‘I love you’, there’s also haribos, USB hubs and porridge.

I love my job.

There’s something I never thought I’d find myself saying. It’s a great job, and I’m damn good at it. I hated the dull, repetitive admin jobs I used to have when I temped, and there’s nothing dull or repetitive about this job. Apart from the amount of times I have to say "Down the corridor and up the stairs"

I have a great group of friends.

Admittedly I don’t see some of them as often as I’d like to. If you’re watching, Mrs Bleecker…

I can now play Mull of Kintyre!

In its entirety, at near enough the right speed. I’m not capable of singing along yet, though. Next challenge for me and my Strat is the opening to Enter Sandman. Say your prayers, little one.

The sign language course I’m on is fantastic.

Couldn’t wish for a better group, or a better tutor. Could have had a better sign language nickname though – being the last bespectacled student to be issued with a sign nickname, I got saddled with ‘Four Eyes’.

The amount of interesting, cool and well-written blogs out there make up for the total lack of anything decent on telly.

Who needs telly as long as you have the interweb (and The Simpsons on DVD)? Bloglines has introduced me to all sorts of interesting people, including Boingy people, funky people and people who are just geeks.

The lifestyle changes made earlier in the year have stuck and are starting to pay off

Just looking through some old pics made me realise just how much they are starting to pay off. I don’t know exactly how much weight I’ve lost in the last few months, but I’m in the best shape I’ve been for years. I’ve still got quite a way to go before I get to what passes for ‘normal’, but it’s good to know I’m on the right track.

Men With Guitars

Always make me cheerful!

And while we’re on the subject of beautiful creatures…

Mew.

Michael Randall

Yes, I know I mentioned him at the start, but he’s so damn splendid he’s worth mentioning twice.

Yep, things are pretty good. I have plenty reason to be a happy bunny.

EDIT – a quick resize on the pics.

Summary: To cut a long story short, we’re sticking with Blogger for now. The move to Movable Type just didn’t look like it would be worth the effort.

I’ll keep this brief, because it’s not all that interesting, but I did promise I’d report back when we’d done playing.

We hit a few snags with Movable Type that just aren’t worth the effort of working around. A key part of the move was going to be based on ‘MultiBlog’ – a third party plug-in for MT, that I never got working as I wanted. Dynamic publishing didn’t seem to work properly, though I never spent much time working on that. Without those, though (or at least with those needing more effort than I’d hoped), the advantages of moving over were fading fast.

Staying with Blogger needs no effort, and is working pretty nicely for us at the moment, so in the end, it wins.

The only feature we’re really missing that seems important is Trackback, and that can be implemented other ways. Given time, Blogger will probably get around to doing it themselves.

So, we’re going to relax and take the easy way out – maybe that means we can actually work on the content for a change

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple row goes to core of online music: “But we can all imagine no digital rights management, can’t we. It’s easy if you try…”

"Haven’t they got enough money already?" – a phrase that was bandied about a lot during the Napster trial (i.e. "Why is Lars Ulrich bitching so much? Haven’t they got enough money?"), but in this case, it’s a fair comment. Of course, Macca’s too busy campaigning to get Foie Gras banned in California to be concerned with a piffling matter such as this. How sweet would it be for a bit of the Beatles back catalogue to be distributed with a Creative Commons license? Wouldn’t that be a fantastic loving gesture to the world? Imagine, Yoko… just imagine…

NOT5150 Website: “The Shuttle XP17 LCD screen with its tempered glass front plate is one tough monitor. The tough exterior and aluminum carrying handle makes it perfect for people who attend LAN Parties. LAN parties can get wild, wild enough for your computer equipment to be damaged.”

(Via Gizmodo.)

The 8500 Calorie Manwich: “So I decided to build an enormous f*****g sandwich. Inside this affront to God would be an enchilada, some garlic mushrooms, burgers, sausages, assloads of cheese and some good old HP sauce. I put in a bit of salad as well to even out the bad stuff.”

That’s a big widge.

(Via Metafilter.)

gapingvoid: book proposal: “A lot of people daydream about living the creative life, about being a writer, artist, whatever, even if they don’t really have anything to say or really want to do the actual work. This book is not for them. This book is for people who already have a few ideas of their own, who may already be well on their way, but maybe could use a wee push. It’s not an instruction manual. It just shows where some of the land mines are buried, and gives advice on how to avoid stepping on them.”

So, Hugh is turning all these excellent little rants of his into a full book. This should be very good. If you’ve kept up to date with his site, it sounds like most of the book will be stuff you’ve seen already in some form or other, but I think it will be well worth having in it’s final ‘real’ form. Only question is, Hugh, is the book Sex, or is it Cash?

The Official God FAQ

I guess it was only a matter of time before the Big Guy started blogging. No news on his choice of software though – Blogger? Movable Type? WordPress? Blosxom?

Yahoo! News – Doing hard time in monkey jail: “The jail is dark. It smells rank, like concentrated monkey. The walls are stained, and the floor is covered with peanut shells and black peas.”

(Via Boing Boing.)

Fender Players Club – Guitar Lessons

No so much a blog entry, more a bookmark.