What's Doing

I’m far too busy (or indolent – take your pick) to write anything interesting today. News reaches me from our very inefficient shipping company that we may have our goods from across the sea before Christmas. Or maybe not, they can’t be too sure.

Frankly I’m rather keen to get my hands on my belongings so that I can resume wireless surfing of this here intarnet-web, listening to music on my high quality stereophonic high fidelity system and so that JFGP can stop sleeping in a portable cot. My back will thank me for that last one at the very least, and maybe even the Reeves as well because they will get their cot back.

In unrelated news, we’ve got a Christmas tree. It is about seven foot tall and boasts a sum total of five hanging ornaments. We’re going for the au-naturel look this year and I think we’ve pulled it off quite nicely. I will try and remember to take a photo of it in all of it’s glory this week for you all to see.

Which leads me to the lovely people at http://www.flickr.com/. They are a photo hosting site, and a little bit more. I’ve just paid them actual proper money to use their service. Which goes against the grain as I usually free-load wherever possible.

The reason I’ve paid? Well these new fangled digital photographs do take up quite a lot of storage space. The nice people at flickr are offering unlimited storage space. I’ve used up quite a lot of my allocated space here storing photos and was looking around for an alternative home for my piccies. The mention of unlimited space certainly turned my head. The real clincher though was that they automatically size, re-size and produce thumbnails of all of my pictures. This saves me fighting with the Gimp every time I want to put another kiddie photo on my blog. And that is a welcome feature indeed, well worth the rather small amount of money it costs to be a ‘pro’ account holder. Go and take a look, and if you like what you see then sign up, even the free account is pretty good. Plus you can leave comments on my photos there if the fancy takes you.

You can see my snaps here. I’m still discovering exactly what you can do with flickr, but how about a slideshow of pictures of a small boy?

Finally, do not come to me for PC technical support unless you have read this article. There will be a test.

I’ve got no excuse, other than Simon picked up on the latest produce a list which tells us something about you theme running through the blogosphere.

The rules are quite simple;

1. Open up the music player on your computer (or personal music player)
2. Set it to play your entire collection – on random shuffle
3. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
4. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don’t have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you’d like.

Simple. Here’s mine;

Song	Artist	Album
Lost Weekend	Lloyd Cole and the Commotions	Easy Pieces
Boxing	Ben Folds Five	Ben Folds Five
English Beefcake	James	Pleased to Meet You
Hometown	Francis Dunnery	Hometown – Live
Grassman	Dodgy	Homegrown
We Let The Stars Go	Prefab Sprout	A Life of Surprises
On Ice	Lloyd Cole	The Negatives
Faron Young	Prefab Sprout	Steve McQueen
Wanna Shout	It Bites	Big Lad in the Windmill
So Much More	Beth Orton	Central Reservation

The only surprise is that there are no Marillion tracks in this selection. The 70’s throwback will be outraged.

Oh, and this is the reason why I bought a proper car and not a pansy wagon.

Christmas is coming and what more could a grown up gent about town want than a handy domestic beer dispenser. Look, it’s even designed to put perfectly cold wife beater into your glass.

I’m expecting to see one of these installed at the 70’s throwback’s place the next time I’m in the mother country. No pressure.

On related news, I’ve negotiated a pass out for tomorrow night. If anyone fancies a cold beverage or two, and happens to be around down town syd-er-nee, drop me an email or a text message.

Lordy! Someone has gone to extreme lengths to document the 70’s throwback’s musical taste on a web page – here.

Although I frankly think that even the midlands based gab-meister would draw the line at Ozric Tentacles.

This space left intentionally blank.

If you want to read what was originally here trip on over to my other blog.

Let me illustrate a typical Todd family exchange for you. First a little background. The senior members of the team have acknowledged that we are carrying a little too much bulk around with us and have embarked on a programme referred to as "fat girl/boy slim". Or, as anyone else would call it, a diet. Part of this regime is a weekly weigh in which we’ve chosen to do on Tuesday mornings.

Last week, SWMBO had lost a kilogramme. To which I said "Well done dear, keep it up." This week, I’d lost a kilo and a half, to which she said "Get back on the scales and weigh yourself properly."

Where would I be without such love and support?