Out Of My Tree

Okay.  Confession.  i have stopped taking my medication.  I mean i’m still taking my blood pressure medication because I would be bloody stupid to top taking that and I know it works, but all the PCOS and asthma stuff that just feels like an excuse to make me spend money I have stopped… and there has been no bad effects as far as I can tell.

I have lost my appetite and am losing weight.  I feel a little tired but am otherwise fine (mind you I haven’t been sleeping because of the writing but that’s another story) and well, I am so much more sensitive than usual.

Nothing more than a stiff breeze.  Seriously.

So, I have started another blog because there are some things you just can’t discuss on a site where your work colleagues and people who know you go to and marvel at the fact that you can drone on and on about nothing at all at an irregular pace.

I don’t even know what I’m going to write on there yet but I feel like if I don’t have an outlet for these feelings inside me I may explode… and not in a good way.

And I am tense anyway.  Job interview on Friday and I am really nervous about it.

The too fabulous for words Hilly brought up a point in a comment on one of my less than impressive posts (although pics of Depp and Bloom!) about the changing look of ‘Camel. And the comment has festered and I had a look. Yep, it’s changed 7 times in the last 2 months. There are reasons both deep and very very shallow.

Deep one first. When the rest of your life is turning into large amounts of pooch poo you turn to things you think you can fix. Last month it was me stressing about the Scout AGM Slideshows, this month it is Camel.. Yes, my dear blog. I am going to screw around with your look confusing all the passing readers until I am duly satisfied (insert evil laugh).

I thought I had it with this but the column sizes are all out of whack and the colours of the fonts (no matter how many times I change them) never seem to do the thing they are supposed to. I am almost hankering for the days when all you had to know was HTML. God, how I miss them days… Now I feel old.

I recently bought a new domain name, which was the name of my very first website, co-authored over much alcohol with a uni friend, sited on Geocities when you had cities and homesteads and felt like you belonged (Just so you know Out Of Our Tree was sited in Area51.. yes, we were that cool… honest). It was the first place the phrase Have You Seen My Camel? was used in a title-y way. We, being Writing/Drama students, had noooooo idea whatsoever about design and thought the blue writing on neon pink, and lime green writing on red looked really striking. And there were loads of rotating titles and logos all about. Everything that could, moved. I think there were even several marquee banner things. I think it was the booze…

When I think back on it though, it was a blog-ish. There were side projects like the quest to get a pool table from the local pub but basically it was just a place where we put the random thought that entered our heads through long nights avoiding the work thing.

There is nothing left of that first effort now except my memories and, of course the name. Now, a solo project it’s more Out Of My Tree… and I will have to do something with it. Y’know. as soon as I get this site right.

And the shallow reason. Sweatpantsmom pointed this blog, Phatterism, out, I saw and wanted to cry. It’s just too shiny. And the rest of you, I yell out, pointing my bottle of Tequila that I keep in a bag especially for these moments… You’re all just too good. Grumble, whinge. How do you do it?!

So, I’m sorry if the ever changing themes get on your nerves. It’ll settle as my real life stabilises. Anyway, that’s what RSS feeds were made for.

But this is my blog and I get to do shout outs to whoever I like (no matter how terrible they look).

Happy Birthday Anna-Marie, you rock.

[tags]old websites, Geocities, Phatterism, design, [/tags}

In the annual Tenuous competition over at Moobs’ Blog, a nomination for me (and lot’s of other people…) has occured. Absolutely loving these sort of fabulous contests I am proudly displaying my badge for all to see… just like last year!

The whole point of the game is to (quote Moobs) “come up with a tenuous connection to a celebrity. The cheesier or weirder the celebrity the more points you get. The more tenuous (or weirder) the connection the better too (although there is a cut-off point – seeing them on television does not count, nor does merely living in the same country).”

Mine is the absolutely true story about sitting on Richard Branson’s knee when I was but a wee girl… while he was being the village’s Santa Claus… I will dig up a photo at some point… Remind me.

This is also my way of pressganging your vote by asking you to drift over to this post and proclaim in some massive shouty (but hugely polite way) that you really feel I should win… unless you don’t… at which point I may cry… and then stop around and read some of Moobs wonderful posts… for he truly is marvellous… I wonder if all the brown-nosing will get me extra points?

(Don’t worry Yorksdevil – I know you’ve already voted… and I don’t hold it against you at all!)

[tags]Tenuous Connections 07, Moobs, Moobz, voteforme![/tags]

Google’s at it again!

[tags]April Fools, Google, [/tags]

First up a big thank you to the commenters and emailers over the very stressful period of the ‘changing of the look’. It did drive me under my desk a number of times but until my CSS book arrives to enable to sort out the IE issuews this is the way it’s staying… for now…

Smiles all round, clink of champagne glass (or coke can) on a job well down, cautious smugness ensues.

Yes, that’s right, your eyes do not deceive you – this is the new look that I’ve been trying to get right for ever… Yes, I know the basic layout looks no different but oh, the tweakage of code to try and get it to not suck in IE etc…

However, if anything annoys you, or plain doesn’t work, please comment (or if it’s that doesn’t work email me) and I will do my best to fix it.

Here’s praying…

Update: Just had another look at it in IE and I give up – I have no idea what is wrong with it…

[tags]new layout for blog, blue and sandy and summery – yes?, I hate CSS – I mean I don’t really but…,Wordpress rocks[/tags]

So, I did an unbelievably brainless thing today. On Music Rivals (an MMORPG-ish thing I play) I maintain a links page making it easy for my label mates to help each other out. Today, to distract myself from the writing going wrong. I decided to give it a new look. How it looked wasn’t bad but it just needed… something. As it’s in HTML, and not CSS, I can tweak that quite easily (unlike this blog but I think I have that sorted…). So I fired up Dreamweaver and set about it.

Like the smart bunny I am I finished the page, opened my file manager and deleted the old one (emptying the Trash file at the same time), then went back to Dreamweaver to FTP the new one. That, of course, was the moment my evil computer decided to shut down for no reason at all. Windows decided to restart and all was very bad.

When XP let me back it and I opened up Dreamweaver again there appeared to be a file shaped hole where the new page should be… and the only file even vaguely similar in name was a version from last month. Oh, how I wept.

So, I have had to message everyone on my label and ask for their links again, giving a slightly less involved explanation than above:

I’m A Dumbass

Er… yeah… so I um… accidentally deleted the sales links page during an update of the site… Yes, So…
Can you resend me the links and I’ll do it again?
And then throw the rotten tomatoes in my general direction too…

So far most are appearing. Hopefully the rest will soon.

And, yes, I have now backed up everything. Twice.

[tags]Mac users are jammy bastards but I love them all, Jealousy is an ugly emotion…, Kevin is the Overlord of Hell and I must not annoy him, Windows is evil, I am a dumbass, Music Rivals, one day I will learn CSS[/tags]

he does.

[tags]Blogography, Dave rocks,[/tags]

Write [tag]words as biscuits[/tag]. What’s not to love? Do it here.

So as I am “the luckiest biyatch”  with the “cushtiest job ever” I got tonight off due to more/constant problems with the systems we need to be able to do our “immesurably easy” job.  I can honestly say I have never been so delighted to receive that news as exhaustion kinda ruled me today.

I am still fighting with my new template but am DETERMINED to have it sorted by the end of the day.  You hear me?!  DETERMINED! I am particularly energised by two articles I read, well, last night.  They talk about blogging and design and how to make it not rubbish.  They are written by the geniuses (is that the plural?) Kevin and Karl.  Points taken into consideration… Critical eye on full.
That in mind, at midnight I realised that I hadn’t actually eaten anything all day and was feeling a little peckish so I put shoes on my feet and wandered out to the 24hour garage (mini radio in my ears (sob, CD player death, sob)) to get munchies.  Being the time of night it was I wasn’t the only person out and about but I was, possibly, the only sober one.

It was a deliciously warm night; and felt like that brief two week period last summer when it didn’t rain, and I would go out for a walk at 3 in the morning to buy a juicy orange (this is one of the ways I know that the Sainsbury’s near us isn’t a 24hour one…).  The air smelled peaceful.  That’s the only way I could think of to describe it. I absolutely can’t wait for summer, although I will have to get a wi-fi enabled laptop then, to make sure I get work done.  Or it will be the pencil and paper nightmare of last year, which has given me files full of notes that make no sense.
Anyway, me fuel bought, I came home to continue with things until I remembered I had missed Green Wing and watched the recording (which had lovingly missed the last 10 minutes of the programme (how great… must wait until it’s on More4) and it had completely missed The West Wing too…  Really hope that gets fixed soon (within 5 days… so 3 left to go).  The darling Telewest woman told me that they will be “remote formatting the TVDrive’s Hard Drive” which sent me into a panic of how to get the things off the drive to be saved.  There is an Ethernet port and a USB port in the back but apparently they are just there as futureproofing methods and can’t actually be used for jack-all atm.

Videotape is pretty much the only way to go right now…. Tape… I can practically hear the mouse turning the wheel…. The thing is I just KNOW it’s going to format in the middle of something important like Sports Night…  But I’m at that point where I just don’t care anymore it has to be done!

I am now leaving the house to go to the supermarket to buy things inspired by Dave and then am going to plonk my ever explanding ass in this chair until this site looks better…

[tags]TVDrive problems, blogging tips[/tags]