Words

When I was little, I was pretty damn adamant that I was going to become a writer.

I loved writing short stories, and i’d always be given top marks when it came to creating a tourist brochure for a foreign country (my year 6 teacher Mr. Thomas loved the time I used a clip art version of the Eiffel Tower as a substitute for the letter A). I was good at using descriptive words and writing poetry, but soon the teenage years came and I could no longer muster the brain power or the motivation.

I’ve always had a little problem with words. Verbally, anyway. I’m the worst person to come to with problems, because all the brilliant advice that I know I have in my head suddenly vanishes, and i’m just left with vaguely sympathetic comments.

And then there’s “love”. There’s been a few break-ups in my past where there’s been a million and one things i’ve wanted to say, but words stick in my throat and I can’t say them. My head is so full of clarity and my mouth just won’t cooperate. I’ve had people say that they don’t feel cared for by me because I don’t tell them I care for them. This, to me, just doesn’t make sense.

I’m not a words person, i’m an actions person. If you’ve ever got up in the middle of the night to get me a glass of water because i’ve drank to much, made me a cup of tea even though it was my turn,  made sure I had enough quilt, listened to me whinge, made the effort to come and see me, then to me, that expresses far more love than words ever could. Words do nothing, actions do something.

When I have problems, I don’t really talk about them. I mean, i’d love to, but I just can’t. The words don’t come out. I have a livejournal which is set so that only my best friend can read. Anything and everything that happens to me goes in here, if I feel at all worried or upset. It’s my little place of solace. I don’t have to worry about being laughed at because of what I say or feel, I don’t have to worry that i’m wrong. All the things that I think is subconsciously going on in my head when I try and tell someone how I really feel inside. That’s why the words don’t come out.

I don’t say the L word very often, to friends, to boyfriends, to anyone. But fuck it. It doesn’t matter. If a word means so much to you, we’re more than likely not that compatible. If you’re happy enough with me making you a cup of tea or changing your bedsheets, sit down and we’ll talk.

Safari for Windows – Not that good akshually

After using James’ Apple Mac for a week, coming home and using my Windows PC again can take a bit of getting used to.

As i’ve been experimenting with browsers recently (I used to only use Firefox, but now I save that for blogging and use Opera for main web-surfing) I decided to download the Windows version of the Mac browser Safari to see how it handles.

First impressions…not that good really. On an Apple Mac, it’s fine. It does everything you tell it to. I wouldn’t say it’s outstanding. It’s just as good as you need it to. It’s a browser. But on Windows, it’s not even that.

The main thing you notice is just how big and clumsy it looks. Everything looks twice as zoomed in as it should be, even though it’s actually just set to a normal size. It kind of feels like you’re using a Fisher Price computer for 3 year olds.

Don’t bother trying to change this. You can’t. Changing the page font doesn’t alter it, minimizing the window doesn’t either. It just doesn’t look as svelte as it does on it’s home computer.

As I start to explore the buttons, I press the button that looks like a book on the left hand side. Bad idea. It tells me that it will lead me away from the current page, and to stay I should click “cancel”. I click “cancel”. It still navigates me away from the current page, and I can’t get back. Although saying that, the little book icon isn’t so bad once you get into it. You can add all your RSS feeds to it, and see all your bookmarks easily. Just make sure you wern’t too attached to the webpage you were visiting prior to clicking on it. You won’t be able to get back to it. Hmm. Probably should have gone exploring in a different tab than the one I was writing this blog entry in.

Yes, a new tab. The tab bar doesn’t appear by default, for that you have to go to View > Show tab bar. This annoys me. Having more than one tab open is something most of us do. I want that bar to already be there without me having to go looking for it.

The “bookmark” button next to the navigation bar is very handy. It easily lets you bookmark the page you’re on without you having to go clicking through links on the top left hand side of the screen. The motion on it rolling out on to the screen is quite nice too. The whole look of Safari is nice, the buttons and the colours. But if you’re into that kind of thing, buy a Mac and use Safari on there instead. Windows just doesn’t do it justice.

This is used again when you drag the address of your current page onto the bookmarks bar, a small box rolled out asking you to type in a name for it that you want to appear. That’s very handy. With browsers such as Opera, i’ve had to right click on each bookmark link, and go through some kind of customising process just to change the name that appears.

The rest of it is fine. It’s a good browser and it works. It’s got everything you need. Just make sure you are actually using it on a Mac, and not just to give a Windows PC and Mac feel, because it really doesn’t.

Me and James in the Lakes

Incase you haven’t seen them on his blog, here is the videos of me and James in the Lake District. Enjoy!

Part One:

Part Two:

I’m back

It has been a very busy few days. On Thursday I went up to visit James and we spent a lovely few days in the Lake District and I had so much fun. Pics can be found on this site, his Flickr or my Facebook.

Also, while I was there my Sister-in-Law gave birth to my new Nephew, Ryan, who looks absolutly gorgeous, though I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet. Tomorrow will be the day!

Religious bands

A few years ago I was talking to my friend Jess over MSN, when she was telling about some new music she’d heard. She told my download the song “Everything” by Lifehouse. At first I wasn’t really into it, but after hearing it a few times I grew to love it, and it became one of my favourite songs. I passed it on to many other people, asking them to listen to it. I really did think it was a truly beautiful song.

A few months later and the song popped into my head, I wanted to listen to it but as we’d had a lot of computer breakyness around that time, I no longer had the MP3. I went to Youtube to watch the music video that accompanied it. It was there that I found out that song wasn’t a traditional love song like i’d first thought, it was about God.

For some reason, even though I previously loved that song, I now can’t listen to it. Or at least, it doesn’t have the same affect on me as it used to, and it actually gets me a little annoyed.

A few years ago I first heard the album Mercury, by Longview. Their music is very similar to that of Lifehouse, very touching and passionate love songs, very nice to listen to.
Unfortunatly, it’s just dawned on me that they too might be delusional God-botherers.

It sounds very shallow to say this, but I really hope they arn’t. The Mercury album brings back a lot of happy memories for me, I don’t want it to be linked to relgion and Christianity and stuff like that.
I’m almost certain that if I found out that this was what their music is about, I probably won’t be able to listen to that either.

Tempera-mental internet

On Saturday I visited one of my favourite websites b3ta to find that it had been taken offline. This has never happened in the whole year i’ve been visiting it, so I was a little suprised. I later found that it was because a fire had broken out in the Datacenter causing an assplosion and everything. For those of you who (like me) don’t know what a Datacenter is, it’s basically just where the internet lives in real life.

Luckily, for the more hardcore b3tards amongst us, there was c4mbodia. This is just a basic site that lets you register a username and post messages on a board, it’s a simpler version of /talk.
But eventually they got sick of us “raping their server” and temporarily closed down too. All we wanted was a bit of warmth and shelter. Nevermind, it was rubbish anyway.

So with all this internet borkyness all I wanted was somewhere to give all my attention to for a while. Digg is always good for that. I was browsing through the most popular posts, but when I got to page 6, I got the message: “Digg will be down for a brief period, while we make some changes.”

I am NOT impressed. This means I am going to leave the house for a while. Fucking hell.

A small update

I’ve been working on a few blog entries, but got fed up with them half way through and have saved them to work on later. It’s unknown whether i’ll bother to actually post them or not.

It’s been really sunny here lately, so i’ve been lying outside on the grass a lot. I’ve sadly gotten aquired some red and itchy sunburn which isn’t very nice, but it’s a small price to pay for the lovely weather.

I’ve just finished booking tickets for Thursday, when i’m going up to see James again. We’re going to do CAMPING in a TENT and I can’t wait. I’m really excited.

And now I have to leave due to College commitments.

Big blog entries coming soon. Maybe.

I quite fancy Badly Drawn Boy

I once worked in a Cafe down the road. Well, I say worked, if a customers order was more than a cup of tea and a sandwich I used to have to get someone else to make it.

Anyway, one day my Mum came home saying there had been a musician there that day (my Mum worked at the cafe too), but she couldn’t remember what he was called. The woman who owned the place got his autograph anyway.

A few days later my mum remembered that it was Badly Drawn Boy. The cafe is only about 5 minutes away from my house and yet she didn’t even bother to come and get me. I’m so disappointed.

The story of Otto

Many years ago, when I was younger, my Brother and my Uncle went for a day out at the Chestnut Center Otter and Owl Sanctuary. When they came back, my brother had a present for me. He’d bought me a small stuffed Otter, which I named Otto (as I was so young I didn’t even know this was a name then) and he was my ultimate favourite toy. I’d take him EVERYWHERE with me, and if I had a bunch of toys around he always got preferential treatment, such as getting to sleep next to me in bed or sit next to me in the car.

As the years went by, he got a little worn, his whiskers are bent from where I used to chew them, his fur is a bit matted and his white stomach is a little yellow. But despite this, he still gets to sit on my bedside table, rather than the drawer under my bed that most of my other old stuffed toys are banished to.

Anyway, today my dad was doing a carboot sale to get rid of old stuff, so I went along to help him. At the end of the day when people started to pack up and leave, there was a few boxes around the field full of stuff people couldn’t sell and didn’t really want to take home with them. It’s usually old ornaments and stuff that just generally isn’t worth keeping.

Today though, as I was leaving, there was something a bit special in one of the boxes. I found another Otto! Someone had left him there to be thrown away with the rubbish.

He’s a lot younger than Otto, his fur is still smooth and his whiskers are unbent, but there’s no denying that they came from the same place.

The problem though is what to do with him, I don’t have enough room to keep him. Even if I did, he’d be banished to the drawer under my bed. Perhaps I could give it to my neice/nephew so they can have as much fun with their Otter as I did with mine?

I don’t know. IDEAZ PLZ.

James are lully.