Daily Twitter updates

November 9, 2009 – 1:01 am
  • 04:11 RT @paulcarr: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth bit.ly/4BMTC4 – Great article. #
  • 15:32 Getting an almost too strong ‘Lord of the Rings’ vibe from #dragonage. #
  • 17:27 360 help: Disc tray makes vibrating sound, plays games but no DVD’s [flashes on 360 screen when selecting DVD]. Google is useless, easy fix? #
  • 20:05 RT @MituK: RT @unthank BioWare RPG cliché chart: bit.ly/1pUP1P – Very true! Still love @Biofeed though! @CooperHawkes @MajMalfunction #
  • 20:55 Thanks to the game crashing I’ve just lost an hour’s progress on #dragonage. #
  • 21:32 Seems I’m going out.. Need a break from #dragonage anyway. #

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By Cat | Posted in Life in general | Leave a Comment

#NaNoWriMo – Day 2 to 4

November 5, 2009 – 4:35 am

Unsurprisingly NaNoWriMo isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, although at the same time I’ve already accomplished more than my past two attempts. I’m currently on 3644 words and should be on 6667 by now [yes, today is the fifth day, but seeing that it's 3am in the morning, I'm not counting it!].

I started off slow with 300 words, but then wrote in the night to the second day until reaching 3061 words and I was fairly pleased with not only the progress, but also the way the story was unfolding. I even shared the story with some people which makes it the first bit of creative writing I’ve shared since school! Feedback was generally positive, although I’m sure some people were just being nice, but instead of taking that on board and carrying on I felt that I’d written myself into a dead-end and didn’t carry on until earlier today, day 4.

Sometime this afternoon I realised that it was due to my inability to write dialogue that sounds natural and is flowing. My written dialogue tends to sound very wooden and nowhere near actual spoken dialogue. Trying to force myself to carry on with dialogue hasn’t helped and I’ve now changed my story to not describe events as much at the time they’re happening, but rather look back at them at the end of the day. Not sure if that is really working out all that well as I’ve only written 600 words since then!

Also thinking about making my character mute or deaf to avoid most conversations!

Back to it..

By Cat | Posted in NaNoWriMo | Leave a Comment

#NaNoWriMo 2009 – Day 1

November 1, 2009 – 3:48 am

Another year of NaNoWriMo and I’m determined to complete my novel this year!

So far I’ve written 300 words in the past twenty minutes and am now stopping for tonight to gather my thoughts. I’m not sure where I want this novel to go or even it’s most basic plot outline, but I’ve started with a general description of some places. The following is an excerpt of one of the central planets featured. At least I think it will be a central planet!

Asteria was both a shining example and a dark mark on the galactic parliament. It was never an important planet with merely fifty million inhabitants on the small sphere, most of whom were honest and kind. Its gravitational pull was stronger than the galactic average and reliant on the seasons of which it had twenty-two, all with their own celebrations. Landing ships was only possible during eight of them and it even affected ships passing the planet on their routes in neighbouring systems. The citizens of Asteria were used to the conditions, they treasured the ritual change of seasons and enjoyed not having visitors all year round despite being located near the centre of the galaxy.

Obviously first draft and incomplete.

By Cat | Posted in NaNoWriMo | Comments (5)

London suggestions

October 30, 2009 – 4:21 pm

I have to go to London next Wednesday, Nov 4th and seeing I don’t go to London often and have to be there early in the morning for a passport appointment that shouldn’t last longer than a couple of hours at most, I’m looking at spending the whole day there.

I am thinking about seeing Mousetrap which I’ve been wanting to see for over ten years and never got round to, but apart from that I haven’t got any plans.

I posed the question on Twitter earlier and had many suggestions already which is yet another reason why Twitter works for me [insert all those social media guru buzzwords here].

So far I’ve got:

  • wysiwygjt: London Walks!  I <3 London! I’ve done 2, Jack the Ripper and Unseen London, both were great. 4 Knitting
  • ChiverstheCat: See the Montezuma exhibish at the British Museum & treat yourself to lunch in the restaurant there!
  • NevilleFenn: Have lunch at the S & M Cafe – best food ever! As Agent Cooper would say, ‘good food, reasonably priced’ – 50’s cafe style too. :-)

Any other suggestions are more than welcome!

By Cat | Posted in Life in general, Twitter | Leave a Comment

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – #2 – The dressing gown edition

October 2, 2009 – 11:54 pm

I went shopping today and can’t remember the last time my feet have hurt this much.

Read More »

By Cat | Posted in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Photos, Pink for October | Comments (2)

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – #1 – The candle edition

October 2, 2009 – 12:01 am

Truth be told I nearly forgot it’s this time of year again. I will be attempting to post a picture containing anything pink each day.

#1 – The candle edition:

Read More »

By Cat | Posted in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Photos, Pink for October | Comments (2)

Some spam mail

September 26, 2009 – 2:10 am

In the past months I’ve noticed Gmail’s spam folder containing several real emails so I’ve made it a habit to check it every other day. At the moment I get about ~200 spam mails a day across twelve different accounts and some are just hilarious. Curiously there is quite a lot of them that don’t contain any links or phone numbers and only have maybe one or two sentences in them.

Here’s a list of some of the better ones, unedited:

  • Dld you know all lt takes ls a phone and the wllllngness to share some lnformatlon wlth others to see around 1500 to 3500 weekly sometlmes even dally. Call the lnfo llne for more detalls.
  • You have frequent convulsions? Time to stop it!
  • We are glad to have seen again.
  • Purify, Clense, Look Better, Feel Better.
  • Feel power and strength of your ancestors when you drilling your woman.
  • We teach you the art of becoming.
  • Best oil for pork motor.
  • Aging steals male strength! V. booster returns it!
  • If something’s out of tune in the Music of your Love, our Male Pilules will return harmony!
  • Lets’ make it again, darling?
  • Even the most shy girls will moan and groan under your meat press!
  • “My husband and I tried the program and our energy level increased immediately! After 3 weeks now I have noticed even more changes. My bowel movements have improved and I feel so hydrated and healthy.” Cindy – Nashville, TN

I sure am glad for Cindy from Nashville!

I’ve also received some longer ones which are posted over on my tumblr and are well worth a read:

They all seem so legit!

Not to forget about Vishenka, Veronika and Princess from Russia!

And then there was this winning entry:

By Cat | Posted in Random Stuff, Spam | Leave a Comment

Princess makes us a tempting offer!

September 21, 2009 – 12:05 am

Vishenka and Veronika were already interested and now Princess comes along, too!

Dear friend,

It can be so that you do not know me but i will introduce myself.

I am … I think … i will keep my name in secret. Let it be Princess.

I am a small Princess. I am from Russia. I am so upset. I am
beautiful and cute girl but so upset at the same time.

I want to find handsome guy with whom we will have a long life.

I do not know what to do. I want to change everything in my life.

I suppose you are smart boy and can be my prince.

Please, reply me back when you get this letter cause it can make me
feel better. I will not be alone. And who knows we can be nice
friends.

Reply Longhair7838@rambler.ru to this e-mail.

Best wishes
Princess.

So she’s got long hair then?

By Cat | Posted in Funny Stuff, Random Stuff, Spam | Comments (1)

A good day

September 20, 2009 – 11:02 pm

Today has been a fairly unremarkable, yet really good at the same time. I was looking after Bella this weekend and Ian came round today to pick her up again. We had planned to spend the day together as he had promised to cut the grass in my garden for me which really needed doing!

Of course, having not specified when Ian would come round, he turned up at 11am when I was still asleep, but as we lived together for several years he knows it takes me quite a bit to wake up in the morning! Ended up watching him cut the grass before playing some chess, checkers and dominos!

  • Chess: I won, twice.
  • Checkers: Ian won, once.
  • Dominos: Ian won, three times! I still think he cheated as I definitely know different rules!

Decided to go food shopping spending far too much money, as usual when I’m out with Ian, followed by dinner, a ‘Come dine with me’ marathon and ‘Kevin McCloud’s Grand Tour’.

As I said, unremarkable, yet we had such a good time. Really did a lot to lift my mood which hasn’t been all that great lately!

By Cat | Posted in Friends, Housemates, Life in general, TV Shows | Comments (4)

Gamer.

September 17, 2009 – 6:05 am

Went to see Gamer tonight and wasn’t all that impressed [hated it!], but there were a few things that I liked/recognised about gaming:

  • During the first few scenes there’s a ‘teabagging’ bit which made me laugh.
  • The cocky gamer.
  • Society, the Second Life game in the film which, just like SL is very much about sex.
  • Escaping in the car reminded me a lot of some of the Halo ‘hog chases I’ve done in the past.

Some of the things I didn’t like [too many to include them all!]:

  • The awful, awful stereotypical characters: Obese gamer, girl that helps him with dreadlocks, reporter that changes her ways throughout when she realises how bad it is, etc.
  • The violence. It was just too much.
  • The random characters that didn’t make sense, like the crazy guy.
  • The pixelating flashes.
  • The camera angles.
  • The story. It just didn’t make sense. Like how did the girl get to him in prison? How did they get the alcohol in? How on Earth did he suddenly end up in Second Life? What? Why?

Some other things:

  • I wish e-sports had such a large gathering.
  • They should have just kept the actual gaming parts as FPS, like they did for maybe five seconds once. That’s the only thing I liked about the Doom film when that came out..

This film has no replay value and isn’t worth watching just for the achievements..

By Cat | Posted in Community and Games, Films and TV, Gamerscore, Halo games | Leave a Comment