With apologies to the flister who lives there...

Council in Liverpool gets a bad name for poor spelling

Since the article is very, very short, I've c&p'd it below:

Council officials were left embarrassed after an eight-year-old boy gave them a spelling lesson. Matthew Spurgin was appalled when workmen from Knowsley council installed road signs with a glaring error near his house. Matthew lives on an avenue in Liverpool but the new signs said “avenune”.

Matthew, who got full marks in a spelling test at school this week, said: “They should learn to spell correctly. If they aren’t sure, they need to look it up.”

A spokesman for the council insisted that the error was made by contractors and that correctly spelt signs had been ordered.

From The Times

It's the quote that made me sporfle. Someone's going to be a beta when he grows up...

Watch this video at Ayoka Productions

I can't begin to tell you how much this video moved me. Not just because he's doing an incredible thing, but because of his passion, his vision for what reading and education can do not just for these children, but for his country. If you have a few pennies/cents that could go his way, you can get his details from the people who made the film.

Amazing

Okay, so I was a bit grumpy about things and went hunting for things to help me sing the alto part of the Hallelujah chorus. I can read music, but I'm not used to being in the middle rather than on the top (oi, get your minds out of the gutter :P), and was finding it really hard to pull out the line in full choral versions.

But it turns out that the BBC is doing a big 'Sing Hallelujah' thing (which we're taking part in), and as part of this, they've recorded the BBC singers singing various lines with and without each other, to help people learn their lines.

I'm using it to learn the alto line, and listening to everyone else sing without your part, you suddenly realise that it's a *whole* piece, that every part is equally important, and if you take any of them away, the whole thing suddenly sounds really thin.

Anyway, I'm sure there's folks who'd find it fun, so here's the link: Get your music here!. If anyone wants them and can't get them, let me know too :)

So, for the Oxford Libraries Carol Choir, I will be singing mostly Alto, apart from the song where I'm singing second soprano.

For Oxford Singers, I will be singing mostly Part One, which is sort of Soprano, and in my small group I will actually be singing soprano.

And when we sing carols (different from our concert songs), I will almost certainly sing descants.

I'm not sure I have enough brain cells for this...

It's almost 3pm here and we haven't seen the sun all day. It feels more like 6pm and I'm ready to go home, not work 2 more hours. *sobs*

I often despair of humanity, but I should remember not to click links that make that worse, especially when I'm like this. The current battle is to not go and empty the vending machine of mars bars, but to have a banana, a decent coffee *hugs cafetiere* and get some work done so that I don't feel the day has been a complete waste.

The irony is, of course, that I have achieved things today, just...not that I can remember.

*sigh* Come on folks, what are you up to? Tell me what you've achieved today - I need some hope here!

So I finally picked a costume for the "Come as you aren't" party, although for me, it's more 'come as you were'. ( cut for those who don't care and those who want to be surprised. )

I have half of a sort of kernal of an idea but if anyone wants to throw me a prompt, I'll see if it hits the spot. *twirls* Looks like I'm out to party after all \o/

Gosh, it's quiet around here, by which I mean LJ in general as well as my journal in particular. I think everyone migrated to Twitter when I wasn't looking (I'm there under this username, although I don't Tweet very much) and forgot how to make posts more than 140 characters long.

The quiet around here is due to a combination of the weather and general busyness. In theory, keeping myself busy and occupied should be a great way to combat the SAD that usually wallops me at this time of year. In practice, I'm mostly getting very tired and cross with myself for not being able to keep the flat in any kind of state of tidiness or achieve anything at all in general. We also had some house-stress, which is over now but has left me a little washed out and bluesy. That leads to no posting, and the less I post, the less I want to post and add that to one of the nastiest cases of Writers Block that I've had since I started writing and mostly what you get is a whole lot of nothing.

On the other hand, I've got most of the drabbles done now (some morphed into ficlets, because apparently I can't write short SGA any more) and am starting to have itchings to write more, which is definitely A Good Thing. I won't be doing NaNo this year, but will be trying to write every day, so that I can get through some of my stack of promised stories before Yuletide kicks off. I also won't be writing for the 'Come As You Aren't' party, because I can't think of anything that I'm capable of writing that I haven't written yet (although suggestions are welcome ;)), so I'm going to concentrate on my requests/prompts/exchange list for now. Should keep me going until the new year...

So yes, most of the reason I haven't been posting is that my life seems to be a random mixture of mania and boredom right now. If I'm not dashing frantically from commitment to commitment, I'm twiddling my thumbs and reorganising my icons folder pretending to write. My concentration span is approximately that of a hyperactive gnat right now, so just writing this post has been tricky - I keep wandering off to do other things :S If I could concentrate for more than 5 minutes at a time, I'm sure I could achieve greatness. As it is, most of what I'm achieving is a mess. Hopefully it's the kind of mess that suddenly coalesces into something, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, that's me. How are you guys? Still hanging on in there? *waves*

Title: Mount Badon
Author: brown_betty
Reader: jadesfire2808
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Gen
Length: 23:46 mins (9.5 MB)
Link: Audiofic Archive

Recorded for fish_echo (who also provided the link, thanks!) as part of the Fandom Free For All. Apologies to anyone who knows how the names should be pronounced...

Cross-posted to amplificathon and merlinpodfic.

I am attempting to fill the bath using the shower. It's taking quite a while, and I kind of feel it should be a metaphor for or statement of something.

Mostly what it is a statement of is "I should put the hot water tank on earlier if I want a bath."

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that it's the kind of thing that, if used in a story, would hold deep and meaningful significance.

*waits*

Nope. Still just boring...

I've got a total of 21 drabble prompts, so this is just the first batch. More to follow!

( For dune_drd: Torchwood; Jack; starlight )

( For naye: Doctor Who; Donna; shiny )

( For avon_09: Donna vs Castiel; ticked off )

( For apiphile: Discworld; Vimes; youth )

( For donutsweeper: Criminal Minds; Garcia; sunny )

( For white_hart: Discworld; Death; knitting )

( For perspi: SGA; Ronon; after )

( For xwingace: SPN; John Winchester; angels )

( For travels_in_time: Discworld; Sam Vimes; fatherhood )

( For karaokegal: Torchwood; Owen; pride )

We won't be buying a house for the forseeable future. Thanks for all the good wishes anyway :)

Still not going to be around much for a while apart from fic-posting, so love to y'all and catch you on the flip-side.

Life has been eaten by property hunting, budgeting and general DIY wrangling.

Yes, it's very exciting, but dear heaven my brain hurts.

More soon. Don't break anything while I'm gone.

becky_h, you're going to love this one...





Think of all the money you could save!

Credit to Awful Library Books.

Everyone who writes goes through dry patches. This is pretty much a Truth Universally Acknowledged, blahblahblah, keep going, you'll get over it etc etc and much hand patting and hugging later, things get better.

Except when they don't, and you're *counts* three months on from when you last finished a fic properly, and you start to think that there's something actually wrong.

That said, I wasn't going to do this, because you know what's worse than having severe writer's block? Putting up a post to help with your writer's block and having to listen to the tumbleweed blowing through your empty journal. But I'm just desperate enough to risk it, quiet as LJ is right now (curse you Twitter!)

So I'm taking drabble prompts. The usual drill: leave me a Fandom, Character and Prompt word, and I'll deliver a 100 word story. Crossovers are fine, but no pairings please. I'll take on Stargate Atlantis, Doctor Who (including Eight (Lucie or Charlie) but not Eleven), Torchwood, Criminal Minds, Discworld, Supernatural and Sapphire and Steel but not House this time around, since I've only seen S1 & 2 and that was a while back.

FANDOM; CHARACTER; PROMPT WORD and a shiny 100 word story in return.

Simples!

To be fair, J is actually rehearsing a presentation for a job interview tomorrow, but it doesn't change the fact that the screen's the one getting talked to, not me.

Flushed with soup-making success this evening (easiest thing I've made in WEEKS and utterly nom-worthy), I decided to flick through the flist before washing up, and was reminded of reel_torchwood. I totally, totally, honest to goodness don't have time to write a Torchwood version of a film. But. One of the things I have sometimes felt Torchwood is lacking is 'whole world' AUs. There are lots of fix-it/fork in the road stories, but not so many putting them in totally different situations. Admittedly I went straight from Torchwood to SGA, which breeds AUs like horny bunnies, but still. I decided I would be looking forward to the fics from here, and that I would have a look at the list of prompts, just to see who was writing what (yes, Chrys, I know about yours ;)).

It was all going so well.

Seriously, I am NOT going to write a Cabaret, with Jack as Sally and Gwen as Brian. Ianto is not the MC, definitely not, Owen is not Max and Tosh is not Natalia.

I'm not writing this *whimpers*

Does anyone out there understand Linux (Linpus Lite based on Fedora, and I'm fully updated) well enough to explain to me in words of one syllable how to uninstall a programme? My VLC isn't working properly - I get sound, but no pictures - so I want to uninstall it, then try reinstalling, in case that does the trick. But the 'beginners' forums tend to sneer at you if you can't do that. Is it just 'sudo yum uninstall vlc'? My experience with Linpus (*STABBITY*) suggests otherwise... I'm seriously considering switching to a friendlier version of Linux, or even XP, but for now, I'd settle for a working copy of VLC.

Most things have worked just fine, but the lack of picture is seriously irritating and kind of defeats the point of having VLC at all.

GRRRR!

We are currently doing scary grown up financial things, and this made me snort in an undignified manner while J was on the phone to the mortgage people:

From The Times: Paxman says Mastermind is Dumbing Down

[John] Humphrys [presenter of Mastermind], who also spoke at the [Cheltenham literary] festival on Saturday, said Mastermind questions were also more difficult than in the past. When told that Paxman disagreed, he said: “Well, deliver this message to him. He’s welcome to test this proposition by appearing as a guest on Celebrity Mastermind.

“We’ll deliberately make the questions a bit easier for him, if he likes. Alternatively, we could have a shoot-out. I could put to him a set of questions chosen at random from the last ten programmes and he could do the same.

Come on, Paxman, if you think you’re hard enough.”

(er...emphasis mine, because that's the bit that made me giggle)

How much would I have loved to have heard him say that? Honestly, what are they feeding them at R4 at the moment?

When I put my Netbook in front of the main computer, I suffer from severe mouse confusion.

That is all.

I actually slept last night, deeply and properly for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long. It makes a staggering difference, and I am therefore obnoxiously cheerful. Seriously, it's horrible, but I don't care XD

On the other hand, I opened up my flist to find that just as I'm having a good day, everyone else seems to be being hit by life, and hit hard. Apparently 2009 didn't get the memo that it's supposed to be better than 2008, not worse. I am currently looking for someone to write to to complain.

Because of this, I don't think my usual "HOW ARE YOU AWESOME??" meme is quite going to cut the mustard* this morning. So I propose this meme instead, nicked from apiphile (er...hope that's okay *smiles winningly*) from a while back:

ORGY OF EGO-BOOSTING!

Here's your side of the deal, you comment and tell me:

1x AWESOME thing about me.
2x AWESOME things about you. (That's right. TWO)
3x AWESOME things about a friend of yours, on or offline. I don't have to know who they are, just tell me.

Here's my side of the deal! I will reply with two AWESOME things about you. If I don't know you very well, I will make something up, post a picture of a baby animal, or write you a poem. drabble (seriously, no one wants me to attempt poetry, it's painful for all concerned)

Come and play! And if you know someone in comments, or even if you don't, remind them how awesome they are too. It's always a free-for-all around here, but this time, I'm making it an official free-for-all.

See, I told you. Utterly, obnoxiously cheerful and with no intention of stopping :P

*I'm British, I can get away with phrases like that and keep a straight face. Mostly

Sorry to spam everyone with endless requests, but I'm really hoping that this is a simple one. For once, my Google-fu has utterly failed me.

I'm working on AU Children of Earth fic, but can't find any full summaries anywhere - I need a day by day breakdown for the basic events and it just...doesn't seem to be out there.

Help! Am I just being really dim?

Er. Actually, don't answer that.

Can anyone help me?

Thank you!