I am a proud user of the Oxford comma.
A small space
30 June 2011 · Comments Off
I *heart* this porch. I thought it was a living room. It’s a great example of how to furnish a small space, which I expect most of us to be living with in the near future.
Things I like about it: the blinds, the comfortable-looking furniture, the lack of a television… I hope when my time comes to unleash the interior design monster, I stick to what I’ve found inspiring and skip the generic — unless I have no other option.
Via Apartment Therapy.
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This would make a great poster, framed, on our wall — when we have one: manual photography cheat sheet.
Reviews → The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
29 June 2011 · Comments (3)
This book is famous. But I had no idea what it was about. My copy is a World Book Night edition, offered free of charge by my local Waterstone’s long after World Book Night had passed.
I reckon they should have been giving copies away like mad, since The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is set in Swindon. We meet Christopher Boone, who we can tell almost immediately is autistic. He lives with his dad and goes to a special school. But when he discovers a dead dog one night and decides to play detective, the story really takes off.
As I’ve mentioned before, I reckon I’m sort of borderline on the autism spectrum, so while I don’t have a full understanding of autism and its effects, I kind of get it. Mark Haddon drew a map of part of Boone’s home on Randolph Street, and before I had the chance to check if it was fictional, I was almost incensed that it was a series of semi-detached houses. Most streets in Swindon (at least in the town centre) are flanked by terraced houses. The only street named Randolph in Swindon is certainly not full of houses. It did actually really bother me. And I was much happier with the map of the railway station platform, because that was pretty accurate.
… where was I? Oh right, I’m writing about a book I read.
It was a memorable, yet quick to read, novel. It’s hard not to read it in one sitting, and it plunges you into the world of someone not-quite-normal, but he has qualities we all recognise. I enjoyed it immensely, but this novel shouldn’t make anyone feel happy at the end of it — it’s too real.
(And by the way, I’m not very good at maths.)
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If I had my way, I’d probably end up with a collection of cameras like this.
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Yesterday my computer was acting extremely weirdly — every time I tried to upload a file online or save a file of any kind to my local disk, it would freeze and then the top bar (the one showing the window title and minimise / maximise / close buttons) would disappear. After a lot of fruitless searching with vague keywords, I discovered the culprit to be the Flickr Uploader, otherwise known as Postr. Once I removed it from my system, everything went back to normal.
Chamonix photos, part 1
27 June 2011 · Comments Off
As Kristen’s mentioned, we went to Chamonix. So here are some photos. Well, a few that Neil shot with the Lumix. I need to head out and get my film developed, and then there will hopefully be more.
With the Gilsons at Signal de Bougy, where I realised that most of the French words I know are food-related.
Proof that I’m shooting film — I had to change my roll while we were watching the parapenters.
Neil on Le Brevent. The only photo I shot using the Lumix. Neo Luddites are us.
Summer dresses
25 June 2011 · Comments Off
I’ve experienced two warm days so far this ‘summer’, and they’ve both been in Edinburgh.
(The temperature promptly plunged by around ten degrees the next day, which is typical.)
Down south, however, there’s a bit more hope for a season for wearing lighter clothes, without having only to pretend it’s summer (I’m talking about wearing tank tops just because the sun’s out — that wind is still pretty damn cold).
I made my first Modcloth purchases not too long ago, with summer (and Singapore) in mind. This little number is called Com-Pleat-ly Yours, and it’s very unlike me to pick this sort of dress. But I like it. And I can wear it over a pair of jeans.
The only problem with the dress is it’s unlined. A commenter on the product page complained that they weren’t about to go find a strapless full slip of the correct length. What I’ve done is buy a waist slip at a longer length, and the plan is to pull it up under my arms and the dress goes over that, solving the transparency problem.
Dress number two is so unlike anything I’ve ever owned that my mother will think I’ve been kidnapped by aliens, as well as being the source of the ‘fairy dying’ comment. This is the Manor Estate dress, and I have been searching for an Edwardian-ish dress ever since I saw Downton Abbey.
Given that the hemline would have made an Edwardian lady blush, I’m emphasising the ‘ish’ part. And I’ll probably wear it with boots, anyway. And that concludes my purchases of brown- / beige-toned dresses. Heh.
(Lesson learned. Paying VAT on delivery for an online purchase is one thing, paying almost the same amount again for a ‘brokerage fee’ is quite another.)
Home office considerations
22 June 2011 · Comments Off
Smartphones do email. I have a smartphone. I always forget that. We’re pretty much expected to be available — to at least react — to our day jobs. I reckon most of us have a semblance of a home office, or a study, as I still prefer to call it.
(I took some exams in our study when I was 14, so the term is especially meaningful to me! Ahem.)
Anyway, at the moment I don’t have a ‘day job’ as such. I can work whenever I like, but it is usually during the day. Needless to say, I have no office to go to (and yet, I’ve said it). The result of that is I am obsessed with my dream home office.
It is pretty weird, I know. This architecture-y corner featured on Oh! Dear! London adds to my desire to have a white room to work in. All I need is a comfortable chaise longue, a small desk or side table for when I need to write shit down, and sockets to plug in my computer and (thoroughly uncool and rescued from the bin) anglepoise lamp.
Drawers Again Drawer Unit
20 June 2011 · Comments Off
Let’s start with the fact that I am never, ever going to spend £1500 on a set of drawers. I could win lotto and still wince when contemplating spending that amount.
That’s not to say I don’t think this looks great, and I would like to commission Neil to make something new out of used and broken bits of furniture. He’s proven adept at renovating wooden furniture that looks tired.
Fortunately, he likes doing these sorts of things (give him a power tool and he’s a happy chappie), but he’ll gladly remind me at every opportunity that we do not have a garage where he can work on ‘projects’ until the cows come home. And store his three bikes.
Crazy mummies
19 June 2011 · Comments (2)
Some of my family (i.e. the little devils and their parents) were back in the UK recently, and Neil and I went to visit, at the tail end of a weird and tiring road trip to Scotland. I’d heard that E1 (the oldest) had been really sad to hear about my surgery, and she came over immediately to give me a big hug when she saw me. She’s a sweetie. E2, the boy, was being a Primary One boy (i.e. annoying but funny, all boys are like that to some extent, aren’t they). E3 was… well, E3. Precocious, talkative, and extremely direct. She asked me how come my baby ‘went wrong’ but Auntie Denise’s baby was still there.
How do you explain an ectopic pregnancy to a five-year old?
Me: Well, they don’t start out as babies. It’s just a thing. The thing needs to be in the right place to become a baby. Auntie Denise’s baby went to the right place. Mine went to the wrong place, so it never became a baby and it needed to be taken out.
E3: (Thinking about this for a moment)… I think you should have five babies!
Me: Whoa, hold up. I haven’t even had one yet, let’s not start talking about five.
E3: You should have five babies. My mummy had three babies…
E3′s mummy: (Shouting from the kitchen) That’s because your mummy is crazy!
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Just heard some rather shocking news. RIP, Michael. You were one of the nicest people I met in Neil’s home town.
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It fascinates me that the email newsletters that come from the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing are not exactly the most irresistible. I tend to just bin them, because all they contain are a link and instructions if the link doesn’t work. They aren’t exactly practising what they preach, are they?
Not senior enough
16 June 2011 · Comments Off
The Economist, in a story about Huawei, made an odd mistake:
But Shenzhen is still the centre of Huawei’s universe and non-Chinese employees remain a small minority there. None have made it into the inner-management sanctum.
Their Treasury VP is Swiss.
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Were there any serious questions asked of #AskEdM? They must have known that lots of embarrassing questions would be asked.
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I’ve just seen a documentary called Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die (BBC blog post), where he, an Alzheimer’s sufferer, explores the option of assisted dying, by meeting people who have been affected by it. He watches one of them die at Dignitas. I cried pretty much all the way through it.