Twitter: a newbie’s impressions

So I bit the bullet and signed up for Twitter a few weeks ago. I look at it most days, but have to say that so far it hasn’t changed my life. I had wondered about its use professionally, and having signed up for a few health-related tweets and also some eastern European ones, I’ve found some odd snippets of information that were useful to know, and can say that one of my followers is the former speaker of the Moldovan parliament (I think he just follows everyone who follows him, it’s not actually that impressive!).

The best thing though, so far, is having signed up to the Viz top tips tweet. I just loved the books, and getting random top tips has really cheered me up at times. My favourite one by miles:

“WOMEN! Stop your man from reading your emails! Simply rename your Inbox “Instruction Manuals”!”

Hee hee!

Of technology

We are still dongle-reliant for internet at home, it’s getting very frustrating. In the meantime, today at work my PC suddenly died. The guy from IT (who took hours to come and see it) thought it was the motherboard that had gone (I’m still not entirely sure what that is, but think that it going would be serious). He took it away to try and diagnose the problem and hopefully retrieve my data. 10 minutes later he phoned back to say it was all sorted – it transpired it wasn’t the motherboard (phew) but some part of the power mechanism, and he just swapped it for another one (from a computer whose motherboard had died) and it is good as new.

Mind you, it probably wouldn’t have been a bad thing for him to have taken longer. I got SO MUCH work done today! (can’t think why!!!)

Of dongles, Dunblane and drinking

Apologies for blogging infrequency, our home broadband is not very well (understatement; we are currently waiting for BT to test our line and try and find out what is going on. In the meantime HD has got a pay-as-you-go dongle (what a great word that is!) so we are still able to connect, but I don’t want to use up all his credit so I am being reasonably disciplined and trying not to waste it all on scrabble. Though I might waste a little bit later ….).

Thursday evening I headed over with some other people from church to Dunblane, where our friend and former curate was being inducted (instituted? I can never remember the correct terminology. I’m pretty sure it’s not induced though!) as the new priest there. I have (and I know I’m not the only one) missed Kimberly a lot here, she was a wonderful curate, and St Mary’s are lucky to have her. I must admit to shedding a tear during the service – it was actually at the point that the church warden handed her the keys to the church. She had such a huge smile at that point it was clear that she had “come home”. What a wonderful service and wonderful occasion, and I hope and pray she will be very happy there. As if that wasn’t all wonderful enough, I can now also say that I have been in the same room as the Cope of Glory (that’s a reference that kingsfold will get, if nobody else!). My goodness, and it was quite glorious!

The end of the week has seen a couple of pre-birthday events – yes I finally reach that grand-old-age-with-a-0-on-the-end next week, and so had drinks with people from work on Friday night (shamelessly piggy-backing on another friend’s leaving do), and then with friends from church last night too. I think I feel alright about it, generally – I was really excited about the last birthday-with-a-0-on-the-end, and have loved being in my X0-ies (I don’t know why I’m not just coming out and saying the numbers, I’m sure you all know!), so I think I’m more bothered about not being in my X0-ies than I am about being *0.

Anyway – we are going to go on an adventure on the actual day, so hopefully that will soften the blow a little

More weirdness

Yesterday a total stranger added me as a contact on flickr. Nothing so weird about that, it’s happened before, sometimes people see your photos, like them and want to see more when they get put up – fair enough. I’ve added complete strangers myself for that very reason.

However, I do always take a look at the profile and photos of people who add me (or fave any of my photos), just to check out if it’s a random thing or if I want to reciprocate. And this person – well. No photos of their own, just 18 pages of contacts. Every single one of whom was called Jackie. That went slightly beyond my comfort zone, it has to be said. I’ve blocked this person, so they can’t add me as a contact/comment on my pictures/send me a message – it’s a handy thing the block feature, and thankfully I’ve never had to use it before (and hopefully won’t again). It’s probably just a bit of a quirk, and nothing creepy really. But it was odd enough to make me not entirely comfortable.

HD tells me I’m weird sometimes. But I’m not weird weird.

I think.

Google Street View

Ooooh it’s so much fun – I’ve been checking out all the places I used to live Unfortunately my Brockley garden was hidden by the trees (obviously the images were taken in the summer) so I couldn’t admire it from afar sadly. And not everywhere is covered by it yet, but lots of my London haunts are.

It’s a bit creepy as well though. Or maybe that’s just me – I felt a bit voyeuristic while I was looking at places.

Hooray for wifi!

For the first time since being in Romania I have found a wifi connection that actually works. Too bad I’m in the airport waiting to leave! Oh well.

I’ve been up since 4 this morning – had a very early flight to Bucharest (too far from Cluj to risk the bus or train) and then a 10+ hour wait before the flight to Chisinau this evening. I went into town to wander round for a bit, but it was so so so so hot I just came back to the airport to benefit from the aircon(and wifi). How sad is that?!

I’m a bit nervous about going to Moldova. I’ll be fine when I get there (not least because I’m being met by my best friend there), but right now, right this minute, I just want to go home and have a normal life for a bit. Not that 3 months of frantic wedding planning will be normal, but you know what I mean!

Once I get there though I’m going to be all excited and enthusiastic all over again. I hope.

Temporarily homeless

Well, I’ve left the flat and said goodbye to the (frankly utterly bonkers) dog for the last time. And as there’s still 3 hours before the bus to Cluj, where else could I go but the internet cafe? (I reckon I’ll have about an hour and a half left, which I’ll try to use in October when I briefly come back). I did, eventually, just about, get my life into my bags. But will have to do some creative repacking before Saturday. Sigh.

I’ve looked at everyone’s blogs, I’ve looked at facebook, I’ve looked at the ship, I’ve checked bloglines. I’m bored now.

All Hail His Noodliness

Oh, this facebook thing has been so totally worth it. Look what I found via some random links:

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Marvellous. My life is complete.

ooh shiny, plus loadsa kulcha

This is the first entry ever made on my shiny new laptop It’s very shiny. And new.

Have had a bit of a manic couple of days – I left the final bit of essay marking till the last minute (Shurely not? – Ed) but still had to type my comments up which always takes longer than I think it will, so I ended up in work yesterday at 7am (horrors). I still haven’t finished typing them, but there are only about 10 to go, and all the ones which I need lecturers to look at are with them now, so I still feel a bit of a sense of achievement. The full relief will be on Tuesday, when I type up the last few and then that’s it till Christmas – hooray!

I could have finished it, except that I’d already arranged to meet Dave (of CartoonChurch fame) and maddie (of wiblog fame) as they were up in Scotland on holiday this week. After lunch we went on a tour of the Glasgow School of Art (will do a link and put up some photos when I’m back home with my handy copy-and-paste code) which was rather good I thought, though sadly we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. The building is another of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpieces, I really liked it – I am lucky living in such a great place, there’s so much to see.

Then last night I wended my way south and am at HD’s for the weekend. Much of today was spent sorting out the laptop – he’s very patient with me, I’m *so* clueless, but I now have the internet sorted out and iTunes installed (hooray!) so hopefully I won’t break it.

This evening we were extremely kulcha-d – I’d wanted to go to the cinema, to see “Other People’s Lives” (already top of the to see list before yesterday’s text from girlinthegarret who’d just seen it and reckons it’s ’stonking’ (and I quote)), but it’s not on down here, so we went to the Riverfront Arts Place/Theatre thingy, and saw the chamber group from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields orchestra. Very good they were too. I particularly liked the Schubert Octet, probably because it featured a clarinet, and so it reminded me of how much fun it is playing in that sort of group.

And now we’re back at HD’s, in matching armchairs, both sitting here typing away on our laptops. I’m *so* embarrassed. But then, as he pointed out, we did meet on the internet, so I suppose it’s to be expected. I somehow suspect what he’s typing/programming is a lot cleverer than what I’m typing (obviously some people might think my blog is a masterpiece and indicative of genius and massive intellect, but I’m not holding my breath). I looked earlier at some calculations (or something) he’d been doing and realised that there’s a whole huge section of his brain that I have absolutely no hope of ever ever ever understanding.

Out and about (21:29 pm)

Argh, broadband playing up, no net access – am starting to get twitchy! Addicted, moi?