This blog post comes with a warning: if you do not play World of Warcraft, you may not get this.

Proof that Druids are overpowered:

Also, you could not pay me enough to make me drink something that looks like this.

Apparently, it has as much caffeine as two cans of Red Bull. What an endorsement.

Potions found on Gizmodo.

Soy has been posting about Hobo, her new Betta (Siamese Fighting Fish).

We had one, but his fins got eaten by the naughty tetras in our main tank, so we had to get him his own. Which he didn't really like. Too bubbly, I think.

Anyway, here he is, recuperating.

He died a few months later, not sure what happened really. He was very beautiful though, with his fins all healed up.

So it's not Friday, but it's not my fault! Look!

1. What was the first concert you ever went to?

No Doubt at the Wulfrun Hall in Wolverhapton, on the Tragic Kingdom Tour in 1997. "Don't Speak" went to number 1 in the UK charts that night.

2. If you were to be in charge of a music award who would win the 'Worst Band/Artist of All Time' Award?

Oh, so many to choose from! The Cheeky Girls?

3. A lot of people think the sound quality on a well looked after vinyl record is far superior to that of a CD or MP3. What are your thoughts?

I don't actually think vinyl sounds better. While I appreciate that vinyl has a different quality that some people love, I think digital is the way to go. Bearcub raised the point about MP3s being compressed to buggery, but that's a thing of the past now really thanks to people having more storage and new formats like AAC. And I'd much rather have a copy of a song that it perfect forever and that I can't lose and will never get scratched. Digital is also far more convenient. Let's see you get on the bus with your LP collection... If you like the sound of vinyl, record it on your computer!

4. What song/track/piece of music can you never hear enough of?

Oh lordy, I couldn't choose... Gwen Stefani's version of Almost Blue is lovely. I could have Madeleine Peyroux on constantly in the background for the rest of my life. George Michael never gets boring. The Scissor Sisters are great for housworking to as well as dancing. There are loads more, too.

5. Complete this sentence: "If I was to put a band together using famous musicians of any era the line up would be..."

Lead Vocals: Gwen Stefani
Guitar: Tom Dumont
Bass: Tony Kanal
Drums: Adrian Young
Keyboards: Eric Stefani

Oh wait, they're in a band together already (except for Eric. Come back, Eric!)...

Landers has been to see one of his old mates in Tamworth tonight.

On my way home. Dad is going to kill me. Some cunt has keyed his car!

Landers has gone back to the UK for emergency dental treatment.

I took him to the airport this afternoon, then stopped at Tesco on my way home for the essential €1 baguette, which was still warm and fresh. I also perused the reduced stuff, and found some German peppered salami stuff, which is close to its use-by date - doesn't matter to me, I'm gonna eat it pretty quickly!

I decided to try to find a shortcut home. Or at the very least a different route.

I failed. I ended up going miles out of my way. I think I was on the right track but I couldn't see a suitable turn off from the main road... Maybe I'll take a map next time! It took more than twice as long to get home, but hey. It's a mini adventure!

I spent the afternoon WoWing, and eating the baguette with shedloads of butter slathered on it. It was beautiful! But as I finished the last bite, I realised I had forgotten all about the salami! I had some on a normal sandwich, and it was still lovely. Oh well. Must remember to buy TWO baguettes next time...

I played with the doggies, I fed the cats, I watched Eastenders, I played more WoW, spoke to Landers a couple of times. I got an invitation to stay with friends tomorrow night to save being on my own which will be nice.

I'm now sat here with a large vodka and coke (think pint glass) and Supernatural on the telly.

Miss him, though.

x

My, wasn't that all riveting?!

I wrote a big long post about Tom, and then I realised he's really not worth your time or mine.

Tom, I can't quite believe you had the nerve to tell people off for going off topic on your Ask or Answer question about rude people.

You are not welcome on my blog.

Our tumble dryer is playing up. It's been making an intermittent grindy noise, but last night I put it on before we went to bed to dry the nice clean sheets for our visitor, and about half an hour later, the electric went off. I looked out of the window, and I could see lights in in the house down the lane, so I tried the light switch, and sure enough the light came on. The tumble dryer must have tripped the trip switch for the plug sockets (turning of the Mini! The poor thing must have got such a shock...).

I went down and switched it off and reset the trip switch, and went back to bed.

This morning, I put the dryer back on, just to see what happened, and it made the most awful noise, like it was in great squeaky screechy pain. So I turned it off and put the sheets on the radiator. I'd have liked to put them on the washing line, but we're having blue sky and rain at the same time at the moment.

Bah.

Anyone have any clue what might be wrong with the tumble dryer?

Still, looking forward to a lovely weekend!

From here.

1. What was your favourite childhood TV or radio programme?

Oooh can't choose. He-Man or Thundercats or Transformers or something like that.

2. Did you have a favourite book as a child?

I had lots, depending what age I was. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, pretty much anything by Roald Dahl.

3. When playing which superhero were you?

Iceman or Nightcrawler.

4. Who was your best friend as a child?

Russell, Ami, Jon and Rachel. Ooh, we were like the Famous Five. Not sure which of us was the dog, though...

5. Complete this sentence as though you were a child again. "When I grow up I want to be..."

I literally have no idea what to put here. I could never think of what I wanted to be when I grew up. All that's going through my head is that Pussycat Dolls song...

Jalapeño is pronounced "hallapeenyo".

Honestly...

My chilli jam is lovely, on a sausage sandwich!

It was really easy to make, although you have to keep your eye on it when you boil it cos it erupts in bright orange foam!

In the jar, it's a fantastic fiery orange colour. It's very like sweet chilli sauce, but a slightly deeper colour and much thicker. It tastes great, but I think I'll use more chilli and less red pepper next time - it would benefit from a bit more of a kick. It's sweeter than I expected, too - although that's a bit of a no brainer, given how much sugar the recipe calls for...

In other news, why is one glass of Tropicana not enough?

Not only does it find lost paintings and tell me how to remove the sticky residue left behind when I peeled the labels off my jars for my chilli jam (the answer is peanut butter, by the way!), but it also permitted me to order one of these to go on the back of my car:

How long before my windscreen gets bricked next time I park in the cathedral carpark in Galway, I wonder...?

...that I like to watch the Gilmore Girls.

Grit started it, and I felt compelled to join in. What's the worst telly you like to watch? Post it on your blog for all the world to see!

Go on, get it off your chest, you'll feel much better!

A while back, on my old blog, I did a post about the pilot of Being Human, the BBC3 series about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost sharing a house together.

It was really quite good - see my original post here - and I'm glad to say it got the go ahead for a series, which is being advertised at the moment as "coming soon".

They must have read my blog; the vampire has been recast! I am glad - hope the new guy is better. Couldn't be much worse!

Unfortunately, the ghost has been recast too. Bah. Well, it was worth sacrificing her to get a new vampire!

I wonder if they'll start again, or carry on where the pilot left off?

...from my much delayed trip to the shops. I kept putting it off yesterday, so much so that I didn't go. Then all (late) morning and afternoon, I was all "I'll go in five minutes".

The purpose of my trip? Ingredients for Nigella's chilli jam recipe! Very excited, although I am halving the quantities cos firstly I don't have enough suitable jars and secondly it would take forever to get through six jars of the stuff.

Eh? What do you mean "give some away"?!

Also bought some essential supplies for the weekend, and some non-essential supplies that were on offer. Toilet Duck Fresh Discs, €2 a pack! Bargain. Tropicana orange juice for €1.36? That's cheaper than the own brand crap! I'll take two!

Although I actually hate shopping. Still, something to do, innit.

Incidentally, white van man, if you're reading: what on earth were you doing on my side of the road coming over the bridge?! Scared the crap out of me!

When I was at primary school, there was a print of a painting on the wall of one of the corridors where we used to line up before going in to assembly. We never knew anything about it, nobody ever told us what it was called and if I ever asked I have forgotten, but I suspect only the headmaster would have known and I certainly never asked HIM!

I always loved it. It was so busy, there was so much going on. What seemed like hundreds of people, some going about their business, some doing the oddest things. There was a couple kissing in a window, a fish eating a smaller fish, a man so fat he was like a ball... Most of my friends just laughed at the bum sticking out of the wall, but I loved finding new details I'd never noticed before.

I thought about the painting now and then over the years, but not having a clue what it was called or who it was by, I couldn't find it.

A few months back, Landers heard a track on the radio called Mykonos, by a group called the Fleet Foxes. It's quite cool, a bit 60s, very laid back. We downloaded it, and the EP it's from - Sun Giant - and it's in my "Stuff" playlist, so I listen to it fairly often.

So yesterday, I decided to download their album, also called Fleet Foxes. I'm a bit anal about my music collection, so I always make sure the tracks are named properly, and that I get the album artwork. The artwork for the album is the painting from the corridor!

With this new clue, I was able to google it, and finally found out the name of the painting and who painted it. It's called "Netherlandish Proverbs" (also called "The Blue Cloak") and it's by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

It turns out that each element of the picture represents at least one old proverb, and the always excellent wikipedia has a great list of the proverbs, with a little snippet of the picture next to it. I've spent hours looking at it since yesterday, and I'm so pleased that I love it now even more than I did as a child!

I'm currently trawling through wikipedia, finding out about Bruegel's other paintings. I love the internet!

EDIT:

Ooh! This one was there too! I'd forgotten all about it!

EDIT 2:

WOW! The original is in a gallery in Berlin! Rampage, we're coming back!

The actual proper inauguration photosynth (cool 3D picture thing made up of loads of individual photos) I mentioned earlier can be found here.

140 pictures make up the photosynth so far, but they're adding more as they are sent in.

I know I'm in blogging overdrive this afternoon/this evening but WHEW! What a great episode of Come Dine With Me!

They're all from Preston-ish places, all quite loud, and one particularly unpleasant character is very entertaining. He's small, camp and rude, and just had a strop cos he's not centre of attention. He started off by just yawning and pretending to fall asleep while someone else was talking, but then progressed to cutting someone dead in the middle of a story and having a tantrum when he was told he was being rude. In the trailer for the next episode, it looks like the girl he was rude to didn't go to his dinner party...

Also, the lady hosting tonight's party has the WEIRDEST accent! I have no idea where she's from. I think she's just trying to put on a posh accent for the camera, and the result is just plain strange. And she keeps tilting her head back when she's talking to the off-camera crew, and it makes her look quite odd and shows off her teeth and nostrils to a most un-flattering extent...

You can watch it at 6:30pm on Channel 4 +1 if you like!

...posting about Obama-lama-ding-dong's inauguration, but this is rather cool.

Microsoft (*spit*) have a cool site that generates faux-3D images from photographs. Basically, they take multiple photographs of the same thing from different angles, map the same points in space on each picture and use magic (or computers) to spit out a zoomable, scrollable, rotateable image. It's quite nice to play with.

They have requested that everyone who attends the inauguration ceremony sends in their photographs. Imagine what they could do with all the thousands of pictures they could potentially receive!

The main website is here, the inauguration stuff is here, but there is a separate (and more crappy) site for Mac users cos Microsoft are racist. You may have to install their bollocky Flash rip-off, Silverlight.

In the vein of Failblog et al, Gizmodo pointed me in the direction of this gem:

SUPERUSELESS SUPERPOWERS!

My favourite?

Achieving 99% Opacity (a.k.a. The Slightly Invisible Man)

Ultra Short-Range Teleportation was a close second favourite...

I don't exactly love Carol Vorderman, but the new presenters of Countdown are awful! The bloke (no idea what his name is) has zero personality, an insincere smile and shifty little eyes, and the woman (similarly clueless about her name) has terrible handwriting in the numbers game.

Honestly! It's just not good enough!

Edit:

Also, silly blonde cocked up her solution to a numbers game. She was all smug until she realised she'd used the 4 twice. You'd think they'd edit that sort of thing out, poor lamb.

...I should have finished eating my lasagne before starting to watch Saw V...

The lovely tissues with balm and aloe vera I bought in anticipation of having a runny nose and not wanting it to be all sore and red from blowing it with cheap rough tissues smell very nice but make your fingers taste awful.

Toast that you have let cool slightly and then spread with butter and home-made (not by me) red grapefruit marmalade is lovely.

A glass of nice cold, ice cold milk is lovely.

Red grapefruit marmalade followed closely by milk is not lovely. Quite the opposite, in fact. Worse even than orange juice and toothpaste.

Abi's idea:

Last day today! Have a go, if you haven't already!

Still fairly windy, but the sun just came out!

Must be the eye of the storm.

In other news, the dogs of nervous because of the weather and Eddie hasn't left my side. I just went to go to the kitchen and I fell over him when he got under my feet. I'm not sure if his head actually hit the bannister and made it clang, cos my wrist definitely hit it at the same time. Div.

*ouch*

I think we're experiencing a hurricane here on the west coast of Ireland!

The rain is horizontal - nothing new there - but the wind is stronger than I can remember it ever being before. We're very exposed here; the land is pretty flat and there are few trees. The wind just roars across the fields with nothing to slow it down.

Ash is being sucked up the chimney, the letterbox is going like someone needing a wee very urgently wants to be let in, I have no reception on the Sky box so I can only assume the dish is vibrating like a Rampant Rabbit and my little car is rocking on its wheels like someone is having a very good time in there.

Our house is a fair few miles inland, it must be awesome on the coast!

I wonder how long before the internet connection dies...

EDIT:

I've just seen a big metal oil drum gambolling across the field over the road...

EDIT 2:

The lights are flickering and there was just a big flash of lighting and a boom of thunder. Looks like the power will go before the internet! Of course, the router needs power to work...

What to do, what to do?

I could play the new Prince of Persia (which is quite good but so far I have found it impossible to die - not very challenging!). I could play the eminently brain-melty Portal. I could download the new content for the marvel that is Fable 2, and play that. I could play Command and Conquer 3.

Who am I kidding... I'm going to play World of Warcraft.

Disclaimer: I do actually do things other than play computer games. I read, I cook. I play with the dogs. I'm just not doing any of those things today. Oh, ok, I might go and play with the dogs.

See?

1. Is it time to change the name of the "mobile phone" as they are now more than just a phone?

Most people I know just call it a mobile, and I think that's fine. Its primary function is a telephone, regardless of what bells and whistles are available.

2. Do you take your mobile phone on holiday with you?

Yes, but it's off most of the time. I use it to text home, and have it with me in case of emergencies.

3. If you phone runs out of battery life is it a mishap or the most worst thing that can happen... ever?!

I charge it regularly, I can't remember the last time it ran out at an inconvenient time, but that's what it would be, and inconvenience. If I leave it at home, however, when I realise I've not got it with me I feel like I'm missing a limb!

4. If they're not playing the latest chart topper then it's some other electronic rubbish so is it wrong to say "I'll give you a ring!" when phones don't actually ring these days?

I think ring is fine, and actually mine does "ring" when it's not on silent/vibrate.

5. Complete this sentence "My mobile phone is..."

...not an iPhone. *sob*

We have warmth! We ran out of oil for the central heating last week (you know, one of the coldest weeks of Winter so far) so have been spending a lot of time huddled either in front of the fire in the lounge or under two duvets in bed! Pay day yesterday, so oil was ordered and belatedly delivered today! Mmmm, warmth. Although, there is a funny smell coming from the boiler... it was serviced at the beginning of December... 

If I stop suddenly in the middle of a sentence, you know I've succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

It's been so cold, we've even let the cats stay in overnight. Max is fat a fluffy, so I'm sure he'd be fine, but Huw is so scrawny, I'd really worry about him. You may remember what happened the last time we kept them in overnight. Only one poo this time, but my word, it was a biggy! And squishy too. Like the one the Russian kitten "uses" in Cats & Dogs. Eugh..

Right, off to WoW for a bit before I go and make Toad in the Hole for tea. Nom.

Getting a bit flushed now, actually - I wonder if that's because the heating is on too high, or is it a symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning...?