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Around the Internet VI

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Interesting read

“Each edition of the paper contained dozens of these announcements, every one more mundane and unimportant than the last. It seemed to me that these were nothing more than Facebook updates. The only purpose they served was to keep a community of people — in this case whoever had access to the newspaper — updated about what was going on in someone else’s life. We often talk about social media as some sort of new invention of the technological age, but here was the evidence that it has existed for much longer.”

http://airshipdaily.com/blog/08072014-ancient-social-media

 

Portion of Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

“The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping bird’s-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbor. Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, The Hubble Space Telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disk. It’s like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And there are lots of stars in this sweeping view — over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk.”

“Because the galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth, it is a much bigger target in the sky than the myriad galaxies Hubble routinely photographs that are billions of light-years away. This means that the Hubble survey is assembled together into a mosaic image using 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings.”

“The panorama is the product of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) program. Images were obtained from viewing the galaxy in near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths, using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 aboard Hubble. This cropped view shows a 48,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy in its natural visible-light color, as photographed with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in red and blue filters.”

So, the image above isn’t even all of it 😀 See the full article here, and see the video below for a fly-through of the panorama.

 

Hokusai_Tea_house_at_Koishikawa._The_morning_after_a_snowfall-catzilla-w

Katsushika Hokusai, Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall. Catzilla attacks. From 36 views of Mount Fuji, no 11

 

 

And, finally, over at FatCatArt, Zarathustra the Cat gets inserted into well known art pieces.

“Indeed, it is not very trustworthy that humans are gazing just at birds, they are not cats to be entertained by flying creatures! But humans love to watch cats doing most weird things endlessly.

So Our version is true one.

Thus speaks Zarathustra the Cat”

 

 

Around the Internet V

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In case you have aspirations to take over the world or have other nefarious plans, here’s some pointers.

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear Plexiglas visors, not face concealing ones.

32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

For more tips on how to be a successful Evil Overlord, check out the full list.

 

If, however, you’d rather be a successful Vampire, these tips might be more up your sleeve.

3. The Hero will come armed with holy water, a cross and a stake. I will come armed with a 5.56 mm assault rifle and grenades. If the Hero has to cross open ground, there is no better way to reach out and touch someone than with a sniper rifle.

25. I will get a voice coach and change my name. “Hi, I’m Bob,” is less suspicious than “I…….am……Dra. ….cu…..la.”

54. I will not send bodies or parts thereof of former friends, relatives, mentors or lovers to the Hero in order to demonstrate my complete mastery over life and death.

 

To check your real life smarts, spend some time on You Are Not So Smart. To let the writer talk for a minute:

The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives – no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.

You seem to be able to see other people deluding themselves all the time – your friends, your family, celebrities, politicians. The mental pratfalls of others seem so obvious, but you have a hard time seeing those shortcomings in yourself. You Are Not So Smart is a fun exploration of the ways you and everyone else tends to develop undeserved confidence in human perception, motivation, and behavior.

They’ve been doing podcasts lately, so those are on the first page, but do click through to older posts, there’s a lot of textey goodness too.

 

A new study has determined that gaydar is real.

Our research, published recently in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE, shows that gaydar is indeed real and that its accuracy is driven by sensitivity to individual facial features as well as the spatial relationships among facial features.

See the article in the NY Times for an explanation, and if so desired you can check out the scientific paper on the link above. It is freely available.

 

Finally, to destress. Poke the Penguin.

The Week in Review: 2012-09

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I’m grateful for the many supportive comments last week’s blog got, both here and on Facebook. I’m also grateful that the scratches Milo gave me were not that deep and are healing nicely (even though the itching is driving me nuts).

I’m happy my ukelele books arrived. I’ve decided to approach this learning how to play thing fairly seriously so I’m assigning myself two or three pages of the book per week so I have enough time to practice before I move on. This will hopefully prevent me from rushing through it and not really retaining any of the stuff I read or play. I’m also happy with the end-of-year review I got at work.

I’m slightly annoyed that it’s hiatus season for many of my favourite US TV shows (especially Glee), although it does give me a chance to catch up on others I’ve missed. (This is what you get when I have no proper things to be negative about 😀 )

I learned notes on the c and e string of the ukelele this week. Expect many ukelele related learnables in the coming weeks 😀

 

I’ve decided to add a fifth point to this thing to turn it into a bit more of a full fledged blog post since I don’t always blog in between, and as the (internet) saying goes: “Five things make a post.”

 

I discovered Postcrossing and DrawSomething. I knew Postcrossing, I looked into it a couple years ago, and was intrigued but then I forgot about it. This week I saw it come up in my news feed on Facebook and remembered again. So I decided to sign up for it, and I’ve requested my first five addresses. I’ll be getting cards and stamps this week so I can send then to Russia, Taiwan, Belarus, Germany and the US. I’m excited already about the cards I’ll be getting back.

DrawSomething is a game I downloaded on my iPhone tonight and even though I’ve played it for like ten minutes, I love it. I believe it can also be played on Facebook. The point of the game is to draw one of three words you’ve been given and then your opponent has to guess what it is you drew. After that, the roles reverse and you guess the opponents drawing.

July

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Right, in July I bought a pool 😀 A 276×169 cm blow-up pool (with electric pump ’cause I’m not insane enough to blow it up myself or with a handpump).

Also, per July I got a regular contract at work (versus via a temp agency), so that’s a nice change.

I bought a new collage photo frame, ordered prints of a bunch of 2010 photos and used them to fill said frame, as well as the photo curtainy-thing I have on my loo door.

Picked the Sims 3 back up after almost two years. Brought on by Nienke and I building an imaginary mansion where we would live I decided to try and build it in the Sims. It’s 2/3 finished and looking pretty good. I’ve identified some problem areas so will probably rebuild in a while.

I Went out for pizza with Eva at Napoli. As per usual, the pizza was great, the seating rather cramped. We sat next to each other for most of the meal since there was no space to sit on the other side of the table. On itself not a problem, but it’s nice to be able to look at the person you’re talking to. After we had mostly finished our pizza the people on the table next to ours left, so I could switch places and we hung around for a while longer chatting eye-to-eye.

When we left, Eva suggested we go for ice cream, so went across the street to get a McFlurry at the McDonalds there. They still had their outside seating there, so we lounged on that while enjoying the icey-chocolatey-caramely goodness of McFlurry-with-mixed-in-candybar.

Talked some more about life, the universe and everything from small talk to future plans. When eventually the McD’s personnel started putting the tables and such back inside we stuck around until we were the only table left 😀

We then slowly made our way back to the train station, walking along the water and the pretty trees that look the best in evening light. Once back at the train station we were thirsty and hit the Burger King for a coke to finish in that last half hour before my train would leave. Some fifteen minutes later, mid-sentence, Eva spotted Mellien, so we called her over to wait for the train with us. After some more chatting, we parted ways: Eva returning home, and Mellien and I headed for the train to our respective homes.

On the 19th I went to the hair dresser. I walked in with the remnants of my Spike-blond hair, and came out with a purple mohawk.

The 24th saw me and Nienke go to a Derek Ogilvie show. Both of us have been wanting to for while now. We’re intrigued but sceptical, so going to a show gave us a chance to see beyond what he shows on camera. Fortunately, he’s quite like on TV during his shows. He’s quite hyper while he’s communicating, making jokes with the audience and such to bridge the moments where the spirits are talking to him and he has no message to give yet. There’s a very energetic and relaxed vibe coming from him. It’s obvious from watching him that he believes fully. I remain sceptic. I’d love to believe this is real, but there were just a tad too many things that can be attributed to cold reading techniques*. In the end, though, the five or so people that got a reading, I think it did help them. And I’d go again if he comes back to Groningen.

*I know it’s the primary cause of death, but it’s funny to notice how many spirits die of heart disease. And how many women have had miscarriages, even one the woman in question didn’t know about… And when he starts to call out the confirmation things it’s a lot of pains here, pains there. Most of these are pretty generic, back pain, pain in leg, stomach/bowelpain. The things he mentions, though, after he found the person the spirit wants to talk to… there’s really specific stuff in there.

Starbucks on Groningen Central Station is opening August 5th and they we’re doing a trial run last week to train the staff. You could go in and order whatever you wanted for free. I had a lovely White Mocha. I’ll be ordering from them more in the future (although not too often, that shit’s expensive).

I also got my first batch of GetGlue stickers. GetGlue is a website where you can check in to various things that you’re doing/watching/listening to/reading etc.. While mostly focused on Media, it also has topics so you can conceivably check in on anything.

By checking in, and liking things, you earn virtual stickers. Once you have enough stickers (minimum of 20), you can have them sent to you, via mail, for free. My first batch took about 5 or 6 weeks to arrive I think. So far I’m enjoying it a lot. I check in to what I actually watch (I check in to TV or movies mostly) and have that posted on Twitter and Facebook. And besides that I actively hunt stickers, checking into and liking things for the sake of getting a sticker, even if I’m not actually watching that at the moment. I think I’ve collected close to 300 stickers now. Too bad they only send 20 at a time, and you can only request a new batch once a month…

Around the Internets II

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If you need to vehemently protest something, press the Nooooooooo Button.

Twenty obsolete English words that should make a come back. I’m especially fond of  Widdendream (Noun – “A state of mental disturbance or confusion”) and Brabble (Verb – “To quarrel about trifles; esp. to quarrel noisily, brawl, squabble”).

Ancient Amazonian Tribes (and current ones too) practice multiple paternity, a system where all the men who sleep with a woman are seen as the fathers to her children. This partly because each of the men was believed to be each child’s biological father, and partly because it provides a safety net if one or more of the parents were to die: there’s always someone around the kids can turn to. Check io9 for an article about the research.

The Brits have founded a new sport/game: The Lying Down Game.  Described by their creators as Parkour for those who can’t be arsed, it’s main purpose is to lie down in public places (see also the Facebook Group for more pictures). There’s really just two rules: 1) The more public the better &  2) The more people involved the better. Please be aware that the palms of your hands must be flat against your side and the tips of your toes pointing at the ground. Just as if you were standing, but vertically challenged. FACE DOWN!

Five Books is a website where every day a writer, thinker, politician, academic or what have you shares five non-fiction books on their specialist topic. The choices are such that, if you were to read all of the five books (or even just one) you get a good introduction into whatever the topic happens to be. Be an instant expert, as the website’s tagline says 😀

 

 

Around the Internets I

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Neil Gaiman proposed a new Halloween tradition to give each other scary books on Halloween: All Hallow’s Read.

Stud Magazine. To quote their own blurb: An online based magazine aiming to redefine the term stud and introduce non gender conforming females into mainstream media. There’s some awesome photos to see on the site! See also their Facebook page. Their definition of Stud: Stud (std) noun. A person belonging to either female or intersex sex that blurs society’s understanding of gender. Often displays “masculine qualities”(strong, dominate, powerful, and independent ) and/or varying degrees of “masculine” appearance.

Jessica Joslin is a sculptor who makes awesome skeletal animals from bone and metal. Very steampunk, I like! See some images of her work here.

How to explain the internet to a 19th century British street urchin.

More flowchart! Evolution of the Geek!

When the Yogurt Took Over, by John Scalzi.

Are you awesome? Or maybe cute?

Since I just bought me a new tie (purple! yay!), this one’s mostly for me. I had dad tie my other tie and have never untied it because I can’t manage to properly re-tie it.  This site has instructions AND videos.

A helpful Venn Diagram.

And finally some inspiration for when I carve my pumpkins tomorrow. It’ll be hard to decide what to do. Probably more pumpkins next year 😀

Encore: Pumpkin soup and pie recipes. Plus a basic guide to carving pumpkins focusing on tools and preservation.

What D&D Character

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This test is doing the rounds of Blogland, so I figured I’d do it. It’s rather elaborate, but the results are definitely worth it.


 I Am A: True Neutral Human Druid/Ranger (2nd/1st Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-13
Dexterity-14
Constitution-14
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-15
Charisma-12

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid’s Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.

Secondary Class:
Rangers are skilled stalkers and hunters who make their home in the woods. Their martial skill is nearly the equal of the fighter, but they lack the latter’s dedication to the craft of fighting. Instead, the ranger focuses his skills and training on a specific enemy a type of creature he bears a vengeful grudge against and hunts above all others. Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. His skills allow him to move quietly and stick to the shadows, especially in natural settings, and he also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does, and like a druid he is often accompanied by animal companions. A ranger’s Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?

Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good —– XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)
Neutral Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
Chaotic Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)
Lawful Neutral — XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
True Neutral —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (21)
Chaotic Neutral – XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
Lawful Evil —– XXXXXXXX (8)
Neutral Evil —- XXXXXXXXX (9)
Chaotic Evil —- XXXXXXXX (8)

Law & Chaos:
Law —– XXXXXXX (7)
Neutral – XXXXXXXX (8)
Chaos — XXXXXXX (7)

Good & Evil:
Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Neutral – XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Evil —- X (1)

Race:
Human —- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Dwarf —- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Elf —— XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Gnome —- XXXXXX (6)
Halfling – XXXXXX (6)
Half-Elf – XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Half-Orc – XXXXXX (6)

Class:
Barbarian – (-4)
Bard —— (0)
Cleric —- (-4)
Druid —– XXXXXX (6)
Fighter — (0)
Monk —— (-21)
Paladin — (-25)
Ranger —- XXXXXX (6)
Rogue —– (-4)
Sorcerer — XXXX (4)
Wizard —- (0)

The Howling of the Jin

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I got tagged with two memes on Facebook so did them there but figured I might as well re-post them here too.

Also, a quick book update. I’m now one chapter from finishing the first book in Twist of Faith (Avatar book 1) and, as expected, I love it 😀
Will continue reading tonight, after I finish re-arranging my bookshelves. I have that re-arrange itch again and I hope to satisfy it with some (for me minor) bookshelf re-arranging instead of going all out and trying to re-arrange all the furniture again. Which I know won’t work any other way than it is now unless I really start taking apart pieces of furniture and I’m not that far gone 😀 So far so good.

Now, on to the memes.

1. The Howling of the Jin

Paul, who tagged me, says he cheated: “OK, here’s the meme that everyone seems to be doing tonight. But I’ll admit cheating right up front – the first time I did it, only 3 answers were funny. So I did it three more times and took the best answers from each. But the results make it worthwhile, I think….”

so I promptly followed suit and did it three times to pick out the best answers. Cuz, come on, this sorta thing needs to at least give a chuckle here or there, no? I ended up picking mostly the first choices though 😀

Instructions:
– Put your iTunes (or whatever) on shuffle.
– For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
– Write that song name down. No cheating.
– Tag some friends – including me!

1. If someone asks: “are you okay?” You answer:
Excuses

2. How would you describe yourself?
Time to Burn

3. What do you like in a guy/girl?
Bleed it Out

4. How do you feel today?
Why

5. What is your life’s purpose?
Ripples

6. What’s your motto?
Something More

7. What do your friends think of you?
Stap voor Stap (Step by Step)

8. What do you parents think of you?
Move Your Body

9. What do you think about very often?
End of the World

10. What is 2+2?
Savin’ Me

11. What do you think of your best friend?
De Speeltuin (The Playground)

12. What is your life story?
Blue Burns Orange

13. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues

14. What do you think when you see the person you like?
Never Trust a Klingon

15. What will you dance to at your wedding?
Rollercoaster

16. What will they play at your funeral?
Born to Run

17. What is your hobby/interest?
Stan

18. What is your biggest fear?
Hands Clean

19. What is your biggest secret?
Get Over It

20. What do you want right now?
Hollerin’ for Haggis

21. What do you think of your friends?
If You had My Love

22. What will you post this as?
The Howling of the Jinn

2.  25 Things

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things (facts, habits, goals, whatevers) about you.

1. I love cheese dipped in chocolate sauce.

2. I am a major Trekkie, to the core of my being 😀

3. I kinda want to be Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1) I already have the archaeology BA…

4. In the age old question of whether you would rather go deaf or go blind, I’d go deaf. I cannot live with not being able to read. I know there’s braille and audio books but it’s not the same.

5. I play the bagpipe, recorder and tin whistle. I still want to learn how to play the piano but need a) a piano and b) the space to put it, first.

6. I’m a grammar geek. I can’t help myself but correct people when I see a mistake in something they wrote. Grammar mistakes on the internet (on facebook most notably in those flair apps) annoy the hell out of me. Specifically: its vs. it’s and the their/there/theyre thing. Also, then vs. than.

7. I would like to take the TOEFL sometime in the near future, maybe this year, maybe next.

8. I studied in Leicester (UK) for a semester while doing archaeology, it was awesome.

9. I’ve traveled outside my own country but not nearly enough to my taste. I still want to go to: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Russia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, USA, Canada and Mexico.

10. I love museums. When we had CKV (cultural education) in school and had to go to a number of cultural things, I chose to go to museums while most of the other kids chose to go those art films and music things. Not that I didn’t also do that 😀 (a film from Tibet and the opera Carmen)

11. I like cooking a lot but sorely miss an oven 🙁
And just a few hours after I posted the shiny red tabletop oven I’d ordered was delivered 😀

12. I talk to myself a lot. I think it’s a side effect of having no siblings and a very active imagination.

13. In regards to that imagination, I had lots of invisible friends when I was a kid. Even a whole invisible family. We lived on a horse farm in Southern France, it was much fun 😀

14. I have no siblings but a very large extended family seeing as how mom has 3 siblings and dad had 9 and many of these have children and grandchildren of their own.

15. I don’t watch TV a lot, but when I do it’s mostly Discovery Channel and National Geographic and such. I watch TV-series too (mostly sci-fi & fantasy stuff) but prefer to do that on DVD or my computer.

16. I love strawberries.

17. I have a cat, a large black-and-white cuddle monster. Monet was his name at the shelter and I kinda liked that so instead of renaming him Gibbs (after the NCIS character) as I planned, I just added to his name and it became Jethro Venantius Monet 😀 But I call him Monkey, which is a name that suits him just fine.

18. I once shaved my head nearly bald just because I’d never done it before 😀 It was fun.

19. I want to get a tattoo in the near future, just need to shape the idea of what I want a bit more.

20. My favourite colours are black, red and purple.

21. I love taking pictures, when I go someplace, nine out of ten times I’ll have my camera with me.

22. My favourite books are Dan Simmon’s Hyperion and Endymion books as well as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

23. I have the most amazing brown thumbs, it’s very hard for me to keep plants alive because I constantly forget to water them. The only real plants I have are a cactus and a bamboo stick… The rest are (good-looking) fakes.

24. I can’t wear white clothes because I’ll invariably spill something on it not five minutes into wearing it.

25.I like to play board games but no-one ever wants to play… So my pile of games goes largely unused 🙁

Memery

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I came across another meme I liked so here it is.

f you want to play too, type your answer to each of the questions below into a Flickr search. Using only the first page, choose your favourite image, then copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows). Leave a comment if you play, so I can have a look.

The questions:

1. What is your first name? (Rianne)
2. What is your favorite food? (chicken)
3. What high school did you attend? (Hogeland College)
4. What is your favorite color? (black)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (john barrowman)
6. Favorite drink? (iced tea)
7. Dream vacation? (ireland)
8. Favorite dessert? (dame blanche)
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? (writer)
10. What do you love most in life? (family)
11. One word to describe you. (reader)
12. Your Flickr name. (Tse Moana, but that didn’t give any results so I went with just Moana)

And the result:

I like Memes, I like Memes

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First a few from the Lost Memes Category at The Daily Meme

Cult TV
Untouched means I’ve never seen it. Italics means I’ve seen it at least once. Bold means I watched it a lot or watched it religiously. Struck out means I’ve seen it but didn’t like it.

30. Square Pegs
29. Rags to Riches
28. Wonderfalls
27. The Daily Show
26. Firefly
25. Freaks and Geeks
24. Absolutely Fabulous
23. Forever Knight
22. H. R. Pufnstuf
21. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
20. Twin Peaks
19. Dark Shadows
18. Doctor Who
17. The Avengers
16. My So-Called Life
15. Quantum Leap
14. Beauty and the Beast
13. Babylon 5
12. Family Guy
11. Mystery Science Theater 3000
10. Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
9. Xena: Warrior Princess
8. The Twilight Zone
7. The Prisoner
6. The Simpsons
5. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
4. Farscape
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. The X-Files
1. Star Trek

5 Book Meme
1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1: Keith R.A. DeCandido’s Articles of the Federation — first sentence
3. Book #2: Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens — last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3: Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns — second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4: Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Goes to Washington — next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5:  The Complete Works of Shakespeare — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:

Ele’er sat impatiently on her stool in the learning room. The lengthy compositor’s error, if such it may be called, occurs in the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 48, verse 5. For not granting her what He had granted so many other women. A couple of werewolves, getting ready to rumble. For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

Hmmm, perhaps I should have picked some more mainstream books 😀

And a final Alphabet Meme before I move on to other stuff 🙂

A – Age: 23
B – Band listening to right now: Enya
C – Career future: I have no idea, which is a immensely free feeling on the one hand and scary as hell on the other hand
D – Dad’s name: Hilbrand
E – Easiest person to talk to: Nienke
F – Favorite song: Lughnasadh by Omnia
G – Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms:  Bears
H – Hometown: Wehe-den Hoorn
I – Instruments: Recorder, tinwhistle and bagpipe
J – Job: none
K – Kids: none
L – Longest car ride ever: about 2 hours to visit family, I’ve gone further in a motor vehicle but those were buses
M – Mom’s name: Pieky
N – Number of people you slept with: none
P – Phobia[s]: no real phobias, I’m apprehensive about spiders, really high heights (think skyscraper) and a touch of claustrophobia
Q – Quote:  Don’t let yourlimitations be your boundaries.
R – Reason to smile: anything and everything
S – Song you sang last: Orinoco flow
T – Time you wake up:  somewhere between 10 and 11
U – Unknown fact about me: uhm… I love talking with myself
V – Vegetable you hate: kidney beans
W – Worst habit:  I bite my nails
X – X-rays you’ve had: lots of my left hip
Y – Yummy food: spaghetti, strawberries, cheese
Z – Zodiac sign: libra

From Shelly’s Book Shelf:

1. Any summer reading plans? A particular book you’ve been dying to escape into?
Nothing in particular, just grabbing what I can 🙂 I have a number of new books waiting for me, including (but not limited to) Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, James Morrow’s The Witchfinder and the remainder of my Complete Shakespeare (2,5 plays down, the rest to go 🙂 )

2. Summer reading: Different than the rest of the year? Or same old same old?
Nothing different, just generally more than in other times.

3. Reading goals? By the week? Month? Year?
And again, nothing specific, I just try to read what I want and that is generally a lot 🙂

From Sinister Dan, Make an Album:.

1. Go to this randomizer Wikipedia page; this is the name of your band.

2. Similarly, go to this randomizer Quotations Page and take the last four words of the very last quote; this will be you album title.

3. Finally, go to this link at Flickr and use the third image; this is your album cover.

4. Put it all together in whatever graphics program you can find and post it.

Wikipedia: The Great Lie
Quotation: You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t loose it. (Robin Williams)
Picture: this one, I cropped it only to make it square so it more accurately resembles an album cover.

Result:

From Unconscious Mutterings, a free association list:

  1. Referral :: Advertising
  2. Indiana :: Jones
  3. Foil :: Collectible Cards
  4. Horizon :: Event
  5. Event :: Eventually
  6. Sailing :: Rod Stewart
  7. Footage :: Walking
  8. Sunday :: Secrets
  9. Breathtaking :: Murder
  10. Dude! :: We’re brain twins

From That’s My Answer:

Tell us what the most unusual thing about yourself is.
Ehm… I sometimes pretend someone I know (who doesn’t necessarily knows me) is with me and I am talking to them, telling them about me, kinda as if they were visiting for the first time and/or it was an interview kinda thing. Try it, it’s fun 🙂

If you were stuck in traffic, who would you want to be stuck in traffic with?
No one in particular as long as they don’t rant about being stuck and all that. Nothing annoys me more than drivers (and passengers) who rant and complain about other drivers, traffic and whatnot.

Would you rather be late to the party, or the first person to arrive?
Late, always late. I hate being early.

Have you ever bought an item and once you got home realized the security tag was still attached? Did you try to remove it yourself?
No.

Be honest, have you ever sung into your hairbrush like it was a microphone?
Yes 🙂

From Blogthings:


Your Spelling is Perfect



You got 10/10 correct.

Your spelling is excellent. You also have a great memory and eye for detail.

You May Be a Bit Schizotypal…



A bit odd and socially isolated.

You couldn’t care less of what others think.

And some of your beliefs are a little weird.

Like that time you thought you were Jesus.