Visit to Arran - new youtube vlog

I've got a new vlog posted blogspotters.... check it!

Proper blog-ness to follow shortly!

Holiday! And Win-Fail Chocolate!

First off - question of the day - is this a win or a fail?

I love the stuff since my intolerances kicked in and I can't deal with any milky stuff or my face looks like it's been introduced to a cheese grater. But nom nom nom... the salt with the bitter chocolate is nom-licious to me.

Well, first holiday in at least a year... so as of 5pm today - I'm off! Weee! I'll be off to Arran for a short holiday. Unfortunately Shug can't come with, but she can stay with Kai's dad and step-mum at home with the rest of the dogs... but I'll be back... with photos. Possibly even videos :D

So, speak to you when I get back!

Kthxbye! xx

Lucky in the Face of Fail

I've had a pretty crappy week.

Not all completely rubbish, but both cars decided to not play game and this week was the first anniversary of dad passing away.

Dad was a brilliant dad... generous with his time not only with his family but really was a genuinely fantastic guy. Clearly I'm biased, but I miss him every day. I won't go on about it too much cos I wasn't really coming on to blog about that. I blogged about it in my super-secret-blog-diary that hopefully no-one will ever find or if they do, they hopefully won't figure out it's me. :S

Anyway, back to point... Failness... oh yeah.

So, day 1 of my week - Monday... $Mozilla_Thunderbird = 'fail'; in my language... I had a client that came on to get her emails sorted. Usually I'm great with tech support on the phone, even with the most impatient of tech supportee's... but someone had installed Mozilla Thunderbird on her machine. Just telling her the instructions for outlook/outlook express/windows live mail/entourage or any other half decent email client wasn't enough. Then when I installed it onto my machine... urgh... it just wasn't something I could zip through like other standard clients. Boooo! If you follow me through Google+, Twitter or Facebook, then you will have seen me moaning a little about it.

Tuesday was a buckle-down and work day... not much Google+ing - which seems to be my favourite hobby at the moment. At night, we went and visited our old mates Lew and Megan (and their toddler Olivia) I'm not sure exactly when the tyre decided to rip itself apart... but it did. Thankfully it wasn't on the motorway. This was my mega lucky-in-the-face-of-fail. So, the astra's parked up with the spare on until I can get to the garage to get a new tyre. That should be Monday.

Wednesday... the dreaded year anniversary of dad going... I pretty much stayed in the house... fearful of more fail.

The day started ok, got a chunk of work done, then I turned around to open the blinds, leaning over... I didn't realise my knee was on the power button of my machine... half an hours work down the pan with a hard reset... my poor machine! Then when I turned the machine back on, Dreamweaver had an error opening up and wouldn't stay open! DOH! I managed to fix it by deleting the cache file it was trying to open but failing... *phew*

Apart from to take the dog out. I did write a stupid geeky post for G+ - I posted it during the week - so, check out the last blogspot post.

Thursday - Started off fine at work... a couple tech support enquiries and helping Kai out with plugins for our content management system kContent. I had to take Nina to a meeting in Falkirk... got there fine, sat and waited for her to come out. When she came back, I turned the key for the car... and tick tick tick. *headwheel - oh crap!* turn... tick tick tick. Flat battery. Booo! So my big brother to the rescue. Thank goodness I've got a brother that'd drop stuff to come out and save me. I'm away I'm lucky again in the face of fail. I did have jump leads in the car - but I wasn't all that far from my brothers house and at least he was in.

So, post breaking down... I downloaded the Google Picasa application. I very nice wee piece of software that shows you the images on your machine and lets you upload tons of images to the google servers for use in and around the net.. all going towards that 'cloud' goal. If you haven't heard of cloud, it's an idea where you would be able to access documents; text, images, videos and applications from the internet... with the advancements in 3G technology (making things connect to the internet without being connected through a cable) this would allow things like mobile phones and laptops (and kindles etc... I'm not just throwing words at the page, honest) connect. Anyway, Picasa now has a nice wee section of my computer. I like being able to browse my photos grouped by person rather than the folder it's in. Also, I was blown away with the facial recognition technology. Slightly un-nerved by it, but impressed nonetheless.

So Friday was one of those days that just was interrupted. Any time I got into coding, the phone would go. Booo! Didn't get as much done as I wanted. Oh well... Oh and Shug managed to pounce and catch a mouse on a very short lead... I didn't know there was a mouse there until it squeaked in her mouth... I managed to get Shug to 'drop' and the mouse scurried away. *phew* Lucky mouse. Shug was a ratter on a farm before we got her. She was super at her job but had a litter of pups.

Friday night, my mum called on Skype... first time Skype user, she managed to sort out her mic settings (with a little help) and set up her video camera. My tech savvy mum's finally on Skype - huzzah! She did of course tell me to change what I was wearing because of too much cleavage *eyeroll*... but that's a mum thing. The thing about yawning being infectious is completely true... and transfers over video as well. We were making each other yawn constantly. Serves us right for talking until midnight.

Which takes us to today. I got some new boots for visiting the Isle of Arran at the end of the week. That's about it - but I'll be out to my mates house later. Hopefully nothing else fail-esque shall happen (currently touching wood)

Right, I'd better get at least half an hour work done before I need to head off again.

Quite possibly the geekiest thing I'll post. Ever...

Quite possibly the geekiest post I will post all year... but I was bored... tea-making-a-la-partial-PHP-mySQL. I have coding on the brain.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT mug,teabag,goats_milk,teaspoon FROM kitchen_cupboard WHERE `owner`='dolidh'",$db) or die(mysql_error());
if (mysql_num_rows($result)) {
foreach (mysql_fetch_assoc($result) as $key => $value) {
$$key = $value;

}

$hotwater=boilkettle(water);
$fillmug=$mug.'with'.(​$teabag+$hotwater;)
$stirred_tea=($teaspoon+(stir($​fillmug)))-($teaspoon+$teabag);
$milkytea=$stirred_​tea+$goats_milk;
$dolidhs_tea=($teaspoon+(stir($mil​kytea)))-$teaspoon;
sleep(3600);
header(location:mak​emoretea);
}

Kai's found a way of over-riding my tea script for his own gains (so I make him a cup too).... he refreshed the page.... teascript V2 will include a mySQL check to check the datetime that it has actually been an hour since the last cup. Possibly a digestive biscuit include :P

Jaclyn's Spectacular Birthday Night Out Extraordinare and Weekend of Real Life!

Well... the weekend of real life kinda ended on Sunday morning.... but yeah.

It was Jax' 23'rd birthday on Friday - so the celebratory night out was required...

I got a gorgeous designer bracelet sent as a gift from the lovely Hayley Menzies (http://www.hayleymenzies.com)... I promised to blog and show a picture... so ta da!!

So, we started off in Cape and decided we couldn't be bothered with the live band, so headed down to the Kilted Kangaroo... (previously Outback) and basically set up a wee corner of the pub for ourselves and our hijinx. Then off to Dusk nightclub... Tee-he!

There's tons of photos on my flickr account, but really, I'll upgrade to put even more on soon. Here is a small selection of the photos...

Me and Kai

Me and Martin... yes, he likes to lick

Jaclyn, Martin, Mike, Me

Stefan, Jax, Martin (in a state of euphoria apparently) and Moi

Me and Alisdair - he's got some pout!

YMCA fail

I had a wicked time and as designated driver - I had no hangover to get over! Huzzah! Although catching up on sleep - that's another thing completely. It was really nice to see everyone and have a great night out with some brilliant friends.

So... after a fairly short sleep - (6 hours) I headed out to the east coast to Dunbar to visit my big bro (who was on holiday with the wife and kids) and my aunty Linda that lives out there. I took my mum out there and had a lovely road-trip with the nice weather and Katie and dog. Linda's home was idylic... when I retire - I totally want to live somewhere like that!

Saturday Night consisted of Captain America with Kai and Steve! Nothing like comic based American patriotism to cheer up a Saturday night... the patriotic likes of which hasn't been seen since the last series of 24. I loved it. Can't wait for the Avengers film (yes, I waited till the end of the credits to see the trailer)

So once I got home, I focussed on sorting the photos from Friday (just getting rid of red eye and resizing) but today - it's a chill out day - possibly with a bit of Stumbleupon and google+ness and lots of old Smallville.

Rampage Networking and the Worlds Longest Hangout

After a full afternoon of taking apart my network in the house (yes, it's big because we have the business machines connected as well as all the technology around the house) I finally fixed the issue of non-connectivity in the kenkai office. Not great for a web-based company to lose connection.

Annoyingly, if I'd tried restarting the lan hub at my feet, I think I would have had it sorted a whole lot quicker. *sigh* Oh well, doing tech support for myself isn't nearly as easy as it is for my clients... On the up side, cables are tidy and plugs are now clearly marked for the next time I need to rampage through the house fixing things :)

The weather yesterday was back to Scottish standard... rain, with a side portion of rain. The ducks on the canal would have had a blast... I'm sure.

Anyway - I've been hanging out on the google+ hangouts. I have my regular buddies that pop on and introduce me to new people around the world (who apparently all love the Scottish accent I have) so yesterday, I ended up on the world's longest hangout... so far till now, it's on its 9th day. You can check out the live stream on http://hangoutongplus.com

Last night I took a turn at being hostess with the mostest... leading conversation towards films, books, music and general chit chat about cultures around the world.

I fact - we even had some musical entertainment - +Jared Mecham and his ukulele and +Christopher Bill... both of which thoroughly entertained us with their party tricks on the instruments. I sang a couple traditional Scottish songs, but next time I might go down the musical route... or I'll get them to pick out a genre of the songs I can sing.

Here's a piccy :) And yes, pip-boy enjoyed the performance too!

Right, I'd better go catch up on some of that work I missed out on yesterday afternoon... tomorrow, if I have some good photos of Jacq's birthday night out tonight, I'll post them up ^_^

Tíoraidh an-drásta! (bye for now!)

Me... and the Microsoft Red Chilli Plant

Well, what's a Microsoft Red Chilli Plant, I hear you ask....

To explain, I need to go a bit further back than the start of the plant story... in the small business we have, we use the Microsoft Action Pack. A great tool for small businesses to be able to essentially rent Microsoft products. Worth its weight in gold really.

Occasionally they send us adverts to new or improved products.

At one point, they sent us a grand looking package... inside was a pebble. Kai decided to cut the microsoft logo from the letter they sent and blue-tac'd it to the stone.

From then on, it has been our pet mascot rock, aptly named Microsoft Stone.

We've had quite a few interesting things sent to us by Microsoft... the most interesting seems to be the Red Chilli Plant seeds (pre-potted in a plant-tube) to promote their product Microsoft Umbraco CMS.

It's taken an age for the little guy to sprout... probably since the office isn't the best place for it to grow... but he's finally got leaves! Huzzah! I'll repot him in a few weeks time. I have no idea why the plant's a he... but he just is. I've still not named him though... Suggestions in the comments!

But I am still looking forward to the next promotional gift we get from Microsoft. They do tend to send something that either gives us a giggle, or at least sparks a little discussion.

Google+

So.... Google+... If you haven't heard about it by now, Google's new social networking section - you've probably been under a rock.

But I am one of the lucky ones that managed to get a Google+ invite a few days ago - so I thought I'd let you guys have a little look around my little section of Google+.

That shiny +Dolidh (or whatever your username is) appearing on the top bar of Google when you're logged in is pretty unobtrusive to the searching of Google.

Clicking on the +Dolidh link sends you off to your own Stream.

Circles allow you to add friends into groups and share specific messages to specific circles. The other nifty thing about circles are that people can't tell what circle you've put them in, so you can share more personal stuff in friends and family circles - yet leaving aquaintances out of the loop... improving your security and general well being. I love.

To add someone to a circle, hit the circles button at the top, search for the Name or Email address of the friend you want to put somewhere, then drag and drop them into the circle of your choice. Easy peasy. You can even create new circles - like the one I did with my twitter friends :

The Stream lets you see everyone in all of your circles posts - whether it be video's, images, text (kinda like status in facebook) and notification of live or who's been using hangouts.

Hangouts are basically video-call chat rooms. Of which I'm loving right now. You can add either specific people to your hangout, make it just a couple of circles or make it public so that anyone that isn't in any of your circles can nip into your hangout.

I'll get a picture up for you as soon as I get another hangout up and running ^_^

This is super easy to share youtube clips, links and pictures and easy to keep real life and work seperate. But for the moment, good luck on getting an invite - as google are only sparingly giving them out.

So if you're on google+ add me from https://plus.google.com/?tab=XX#103038287804535196503/posts

Happy Hair day!

So, after being awake for a rediculous amount of time last night researching Google Merchant stuff (for those that aren't in the know... it's the Shopping Section that Google does)

Anyway, today was my haircut day! Huzzah! To fringe or not to fringe was my question of the day.... photo later on - but yes... I fringed up :)

So last night I completely got so wrapped up in work that I never got the chance to edit the new JustBeautifully vlog on a new product range they're about to launch on the site called IdHair (a group of very yummy smelling hair waxes). So the footage is still on the camera, waiting patiently for me to ramble on about the waxes, post styling Kai's hair.

Oh, since running off to meet up with friends in the last paragraph - the very lovely Steve will be helping me to top-off my hair-styling-wax vlog. Apparently this stuff is amazing - and Steve hair doesn't just defy gravity, it actively enforces it - we'll see who the winner is.

I had a lovely night at Aimee and Chris's... although Everly was already asleep by the time we got over there... I was super naughty and had some ice-cream... totally against my intolerances... but meh... I'm not fussed about being mega spotty right now anyway.

Other than that, not much going on today - just been playing with the quite rightly-awesome Google Plus. If you're on, please join me on https://plus.google.com/103038287804535196503

I'm pretty hyped up and in uber geek mode having had just an invite to see what Google Plus is all about. I tried to tell two of my non-techie friends out (at the same time) and they looked at me blankly, telling me how I managed to geek-up their day. It's true that I don't tend to geek-out unless there's something I really really really want, but never expect to get - but this time, I managed to score an invite pretty quick and was up and running by the end of breakfast.

So... Google + or Google Plus as other people refer to it - what's that all about?

Basically, it's a section of google that stores information about you that you want to share.

Elaborating, you can store photos, pictures, statuses and the new format of groups - in the plus, referred to as Circles.

You open up into a Stream of what the people in your circles have been up to quite similarly to Facebook, only for the moment without the annoying Farmville stuff (yes, I'm aware - hypocrite - I play farmville - but with minimal wall crap)

Plus seems not completely polished yet. And they are still restricting the invites - but I can see it going somewhere - even if it's just somewhere new for http://phillyd.tv to pimp out his new youtube vids.

Right, I'm off to sleep before I collapse... although tomorrow, I hope to have at least an hour and a half playing Spore... without anyone objecing.

Tíoraidh xx

A little bit of workness... Google and Taxonomy

So, for my normal followers, this post’ll probably never rate in a month of
Sundays, but it may interest some of my codey-followers and maybe even help a
few of them out - especially those having problems with clients in other
countries trying to use Google Merchant.

OK, when dealing with Google product type taxonomy, it seems that the only
link that seems to be out there for any sort of indication is the US link:
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.en-US.txt
(US English)

This doesn’t really really help with us over in the UK, so my brother Andy
(kudos to him) decided to try to figure out if they had a British version… in
fact it’s Great British…. referred to in:

http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.en-GB.txt

It’s there and it’s different than the US list (just check the bottom of
both. The US one has Vehicles & Parts, yet the UK finishes at Toys &
Games.

So I decided to poke the google server with a big stick (using details from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd318693(v=vs.85).aspx
and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533052(v=vs.85).aspx
) and managed to come out with a wee list of taxonomy for different
languages/countries. Huzzah!

So, here’s the list that I came up with - you’ll need the character set
installed on your computer to be able to see them all without seeing
gobbledegook:

http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.en-GB.txt
(UK English)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.en-US.txt
(US English)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.cs-CS.txt
(Czech)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.de-DE.txt
(German)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.es-ES.txt
(Spain)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.fr-FR.txt
(French)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.it-IT.txt
(Italian)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.ja-JP.txt
(Japanese)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.nl-NL.txt
(Dutch)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.ru-RU.txt
(Russian)
http://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy.zh-CN.txt
(People’s Republic of China)

So, hopefully this’ll help a few people. Leave a comment if it’s helped you
out.

Totally worth listening to...

Film day!

So, twice in two days I have been called Repunzel. What’s with that?

Everly - Chris and Aimee’s wee one decided she loved my hair and proceeded to
try to get it for herself :P

Other than that, I’ve had a film-day today. Started off with Pirates of the
Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (the first one)… then Mr Deeds… I
*heart* that film… although I love just about anything Adam Sandler’s in (‘very
sneaky sneaky’). Then we went to the cinema to watch Bad Teacher… which had some
fairly funny bits - but wasn’t the funniest thing that’s been out this year (see
Hangover 2 for the funniest film so far).. Now we’ve got on Employee of the
Month. I’m now regretting that decision. But once we’ve finished with this, next
up is the pilot episode of Smallville.

I saw the link to this and didn’t really want to read too much into it - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005515/Introducing-Foreskin-Man-Comic-hero-launched-battle-evil-circumcision.html
- Nuff said.

Where’s Odlaw (the yellow-black jumper dude in Where’s Wally?) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005471/Wheres-Wally-Street-Performance-World-Championships-attempt-break-Guiness-World-record.html

Why do people have to hate on glasses… http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a325557/fiona-bruces-glasses-on-bbc-news-cause-storm.html
As a spec-wearer myself… it’s not always possible to wear contacts all the time.
Especially when your job is to read stuff off an autocue - it’s pretty important
to be able to read the words. Stop the hating.

Right, that’s the extras done for Employee of the Month (which was better
than the film) - so I’m off to watch Smallville’s Pilot… whoop!

So, tìoraidh! xx

Uhhh... where'd the sun go?

Madainn mhath my fine blogger friends!

I've still got a bit of the sore throat from the stupid flu thing I had last week (Boo to the flu!)

Really I'm procrastinating... silly really - I have stuff to do, but my brain seems to be in park mode.

I'm looking forward to going a wee shopping jaunt with mum - usually a one-day event per year (on the run up to Christmas) but she asked if I would... so I will ^_^

Looking forward to seeing Green Lantern... (if I can convince Kai - that will happen tonight :P) Ryan Reynolds... *rwar*pounce*!

Anyone who's not been watching the news has missed the Alberta riots - hockey fans went crazy after a game... what's up with that? I thought the old firm games created hostility occasionally - but nothing on that scale.... as a relatively non-follower of either hockey or football, I don't really relate why it was send people crazy. Get it together people!

Here's one of the hundreds of links on the news sites about the violence... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004127/Young-girl-faces-baying-mob-hundreds-trash-car.html

On the other end of the scale, you can see why people are protesting over in Greece and why people are getting to the stage of lashing out - Stories like this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13801650 makes me feel appreciative that I've got a job and that I live in the UK.

Oh, and for those youtube geeks out there... they've brought back the Watched icon if you've seen stuff you've subscribed to or friends have liked... I kinda liked that feature... small, but informative. :)

Little update - Green Lantern tonight is on! Woot! Can't wait!

Just cos Simon’s Cat must be mentioned and spread around the planet. :)

Getting back on the Blogger bandwagon

Hey guys,

It's been a mental few weeks where I've hardly talked to anyone, seen anyone or gone anywhere except for my office desk and bed.

I've not even had the brain capacity to read 'proper books for adults' and defaulted to the Percy Jackson series... which was brilliant - can't wait for the next in the series to come out in October.

I'm currently just starting Hard Bitten by Chloe Neill... the latest in the Chicagoland Vampires series. *hearts*

Other than that, in the background of the fog of constantly working... we finished all the box-sets of the modern Doctor Who's... and have almost caught up with the world with Eureka.

Kai went airsofting last night, so I was on my tod... so sat about playing games on Facebook (yes, it's come to that) and then read my book for a bit.

I want to find my Spore for PC disc... I'm sure I didn't throw it out and see if this work machine is up to playing it... I used to be able to sit for hours with that... or maybe I'll crack open Fallout New Vegas... Hmm..

Anyway... I'll be back... this time I mean it!

:P Love your faces. xx

I’m loving the new Google Chrome adverts - have you seen them yet?

I'm a total fan of Danny Bhoy... *hearts*

Uh oh...

I awoke to the news that I was sleepwalking last night... doing goodness knows what at about half 2 in the morning... at least I had my jammies on. *phew*

Donald and Shug being cute and nicking my bed!

Dutch football club sign up a toddler

What on earth is the world coming to?

Although, if the vid is real - he's amazing!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13224130