Irish Blog Awards 2008

Nominations are being accepted for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards.

Should you think Writing it down fills in Pieces of the Puzzle is worthy of a mention, I should be pleased if you would visit the Nominations Page at this link and follow the onscreen instructions.

Irish Blog Awards
"Go here to nominate your favourite bloggers. You do not have to fill in the form for every category. Just the ones you think you have a suitable blog for. Good luck to everyone.

"There are two judging rounds this year, so every nominated blog will be judged. No public vote means it is about quality, not the number of people who like you. Any nomination that nominates a blog for every category will be treated as spam and that nomination will be deleted. Choose wisely."

Post Christmas Colours not all Blue

There are few things as colourful, post Christmas, than the local cemetery. That's where Herself and I ended up this afternoon to lay some Carnations in the vicinity of the Mammy's memorial and also to drop a few sneaky sweeties (no doubt she has a packet down the side of her celestial armchair).

There are rows of bright ribbons, green garlanded wreaths, bows, Santa Clauses, windmills, wind chimes, toys and flowers all over Newlands cemetery today as visitors remember their loved ones this Christmas season.

My mother's cremated remains are in a compartment in an eight-foot high wall part way into the cemetery. The lettering has weathered and I spoke with my father this evening about having it renewed, maybe with gold paint. I'll phone the cemetery people next week to ask how it can be arranged.

It brought a lump to the throat, visiting her again. I miss her, especially at this time of the year, which she enjoyed.

We then went on the hunt for some tiles for the new porch. I fancy something rust coloured or reddish, but the prevailing fashion appears to be for non-threatening biscuit. I can see the point.

We came across some dark brown tiles which might have done the trick. But the assistant (I wouldn't call him a "Salesman") pointed under the display to perhaps twenty individual tiles lying on a wooden pallet:

"Those are all there are of that pattern."

"And you have no more in stock?"

"No."

To be fair, he did show us some other tiles on display, none of which were to our tastes. As we left and went back to the car I said to Herself:

"A real Salesman would have persuaded me to buy the display and recycle the tiles on it..."

I suppose there wouldn't have been enough to finish the job anyway. I must look up some other tile outlets this evening before our next sortie into the retail world tomorrow.

Funnily enough, B&Q had no black masonry paint in stock. There were lots of bizarre colours: the types that youngsters in first-time mortgage apartments might paint their walls. There were a couple in their 20s going about the paint aisles arguing over whether or not they were going to repaint at all this season. He was saying that he'd pay for it himself. She was not impressed with the offer, so I guess whatever it was that needed painting she had chosen the original colour.

We looked at CCTV options. There are ones which look like ordinary spyholes in the front door but which are really cameras. Ditto ones which look like ornamental outdoor lamps. The spyhole options start from around €20, which seems cheap and possibly unreliable. But in true B&Q style, it seems that the cheap bit is followed by the also cheap bit cable, connected with the slightly-more-expensive black box bit, connected with the slightly more expensive other black box, and so on and so on until the debit card is slightly melted.

Off to Woodies tomorrow to buy black masonry paint. And an extendable pole to hang Christmas lights which I am going to adapt to window cleaning.

Using Windows Live Writer

I've been dabbling about with Windows Live Spaces (all bow) this morning, mostly to see what can be done with their version of blogging. It kind of looks like a Microsoft version of Facebook. It has a profile section and a facility to Add Friends and so on. And it has a Live Writer application to download which allows one to add to one's blog by writing the blog while offline, then uploading to the blog later. It works for non Windows Live blogs too.

I am presently typing on a background similar in appearance to that used on WIDFIPOTP, which is a bit odd, because the usual Blogger interface is simple black text on white. I'll have to see if it can upload to more than one blog at a time later on.

I like the spelling checker and the familiar Windows stylee menu systems. Tags seem to need a slight bit more research. Blogger isn't included in the default values in the "Insert Tags" menu.

Update: Yes, it is possible to use the Writer to publish to two or more blogs, if not simultaneously, at least consecutively.

Links: Windows Live Spaces; Facebook

10,000 hits

Congratulations to the airspeed.ie customer who became the 10,000th visitor to Writing it Down fills in Pieces of the Puzzle on December 27th 2007 at 11.40am.

I am sorry I don't have a WIDFIPOTP tee-shirt in your size to present to you, or a jaunty bumper sticker with an appropriate slogan. You will have to make do with my heartfelt thanks for your visit, which appears to have lasted..... 0 seconds.

Ah.

Let's move on then, shall we?