Archives for November 2007

Out of my comfort zone

November 16, 2007 by Jen

On Tuesday night I went along to a meetup of ukulele players. It was the second meetup of this group so presumably some people there went to the last one and were familiar with others. Even though I went with a couple of friends I was a bit nervous about doing it.

Nonetheless I did it and it was initially daunting for two seconds so I needn’t have worried but is very typical of me. We got there a bit late but it happened to be during a drinks break so it was okay.

And it was good fun. I enjoy playing the uke and I enjoy singing and I got to do both. Not only that but we taught the rest of the group the chords for Ring of Fire. Many songs have three-five chords so are quite easy to do once you get the hang of it.

Going along to something like this is a good experience not only for the playing and singing, but being able to learn off others. As I said some of the people there were quite good. One guy at the end treated us to some ukulele blues. He had a fantastic uke though, not a cheap $20 one which I’m sure made a lot of difference.

Now I have to learn how to play Smoke on the Water because next Friday night at the opening night of the Guitar Festival in Adelaide a Guiness Book of Records attempt will be made to get the most guitar players in one sitting playing at the same time. Fortunately this includes ukuleles. Apart from the main riff in Smoke on the Water I have no idea how the rest goes but I’m sure I’ll bumble along with it.

While I’m on the uke theme I’ve had a request to show someone a video of my friends and I playing and singing our ukes and I have such footage but it’s 80Mb or so. What software could I use to edit it down a bit?

Getting work done at the house

November 15, 2007 by Jen

Last night my nephew and I moved the movable furniture out of my kitchen and back room, then pulled up the old lino in preparation for new lino. Afterwards I swept and vacuumed up years worth of dust and furballs and hopefully some of the mould smell.

I’ve been in my house nine years and when I moved in there were little holes and rips in the lino and I was fully aware that it needed replacing. It was obviously laid unprofessionally and I could hear the grit underneath it as I walked over it after I’d vacuumed. After I got the bulk of the interior painted just over a year ago I thought I’d get the floor coverings done not long afterwards. I didn’t for various reasons and finally got around to selecting some new lino a few months ago.

It took longer to come in than I expected but I finally got a phone call a couple of weeks ago setting a date for it to be laid.

So, back to moving furniture. Lucky we’re not expecting rain because most of it went outside as I don’t have room elsewhere within the house to temporarily house it. The fridge is in the lounge room which is actually quite handy when watching television and needing a cold beverage.

So this morning, the lino layer arrived and inspected the bare floor. I bit my lip while I waited for the inevitable ‘oh’ from the lino layer.

Sure enough, it happened. There is a drain out in the back room that is not used by anything and sits underneath a cupboard but it has to be filled in and needs time to dry. This means that the lino now will not be laid until Monday and I thought I had the weekend to get the house back to normal. I can’t do any washing – perhaps that’s a good thing as it will give me a chance to fold up the two clean loads I have. The lino layer helped me move the kitchen table and another small cupboard back into the kitchen so I can at least use that. Of course they’ll have to be moved back out again on Monday.

It’s quite inconvenient, but not the worst thing that can happen to a person and at the end I’ll have fabulous new lino that matches in the two rooms, without any rips and tears.

The things he says

November 13, 2007 by Jen

Part of the fun about parenting (there’s got to be some fun right?) are the things that kids say that either confound you or make you laugh. Here’s some stuff that JJ says quite constantly.

He loves to say prove it in response to just about anything I tell him that he doesn’t believe, for example, ‘Mum, what channel is the tv on at the moment?’
‘Channel 2, the ABC.’
‘Prove it.’
‘Well there’s the ABC symbol in the bottom corner of the screen.’
But of course, it’s not always that easy.
‘Mum, why is this finger the rude one?’ as he holds up his index finger.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Everyone in the whole world says it is.’
‘Do you know everyone in the whole world do you?’
‘Well, lots of people say it.’
‘I’m not really sure. Now have you had enough breakfast?’ I deftly change the subject.
‘Mum have you got a girlfriend?’
‘Sure, I’ve got lots of girlfriends.’
‘I’ve got a girlfriend.’
‘Who?’
‘You, mum.’
‘Mum, you’re beautiful, I love you.’ He’s been saying this for a while and this is one thing I don’t want him to stop saying.

Where do the weekends go?

November 11, 2007 by Jen

Yet again, I find myself at another Sunday night? I have three day weekends and those three days are the quickest three days of my week.

I work a four day week and while JJ is at school I have Fridays to myself. That is a bit of a furphy though because by the time I help with listening to him and his classmates read it’s nearly 9.30 by the time I get home. I usually do the grocery shopping on a Friday so there’s at least another hour.

This Friday just gone I met some girlfriends for lunch down at the beach. It was a lovely day, just perfect to be near the beach catching up with these girlfriends I don’t see that often. By the time I had lunch it was time to be at the school for the school pickup.

On Saturday I started clearing out cupboards in the kitchen and back room in preparation for new floor covering that we’re getting next week. I also did some vacuuming, mowed the lawn and did some weeding.

We drove down to Port Willunga to go to the beach before having dinner at a friend’s house where we stayed the night. After getting home at 1pm or so today, preparing dinner, brushing the dog, unpacking from the night away, doing a bit more clearing out, it’s now 8.30 and I have to go to work tomorrow.

I didn’t even get the time to logon to the computer which was half planned because after last weekend I needed a break from it, but I’m still left reeling wondering where the last three days have gone.

I’d better open my eyes because before I know it, 2008 will be here.

Flashing ads in Facebook

November 9, 2007 by Jen

Please Facebook – I do not want to play Scrabulous with a flashing ad on the screen. I’m a winner it claims. No I’m not a winner, not if I get dragged off to hospital with epilepsy because of you flashing. Stop it please.

Turn Google reader shared items into blogroll

November 7, 2007 by Jen

A while back I wrote about how Google Reader can save you time and give you a kickass dynamic blogroll. It still can, and now you can have a normal blogroll based on your feed subscriptions.

Google have a 20% rule which I’d heard about at the Web Directions conference. This means that 20% of each employee’s time can be used to do things that aren’t necessarily in their job description. As mentioned at Web Directions in The Myths of Innovation, this can be a great way to innovate. This is exactly what one employee has done and I’m sure it will be a feature that is readily adopted. Take note employers, the 20% rule sounds like a good one, both for the company and for employee morale.

A few months ago I manually created a blogroll based on my subscriptions and it took ages so I’m really glad to hear about this new feature.

I use Google Reader so I went to have a look at the new feature and would have done a show and tell, but I need to tidy up my feed subscriptions first as I have some in there that are inactive feeds to blogs. This will give me the impetus to do that and I will report back.

Still getting over the move

November 6, 2007 by Jen

Saturday morning was the morning I figuratively flicked the switches for this blog to be WordPress based. I will write about the move and how I found it because when I wanted to move from Typepad to WordPress there was a bit of information, but not enough. I guess everyone’s case is different and everyone’s level of skill is quite different. I’m reasonably technically minded and if I hadn’t been I would have been up the you know what creek without a paddle. This is where, if you don’t want to get your hands dirty, get someone to do it for you.

It all took a bit longer than I thought and I was sitting at this computer on Saturday morning with my son standing next to me telling me off for spending so much time at the computer when he could be playing a game on it thank you very much. He’s right, I did spend far too much time at the computer over the last week and my sore eyes are testament to that. This weekend coming up will have the computer turned off.

Now that I’ve moved to my new home I want to forget about it. I just want to sit tight and not do much else for a little while but unfortunately there’s still some unpacking to do. The main thing is I have to re-reference the images I had sitting on Typepad. I need to do this quite soon because I want to stop paying for that hosting in addition to the hosting for the new home.

To add to this I started my new job on Monday so there’s a lot to get my head around for that.

This is why I didn’t do NaBloPoMo this year, and don’t forget I did warn you about the commitment.

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