Yes, I finally got round to buying a tablet, as this computer (see the review) is so painfully slow. I really just wanted something to browse the net with, access my emails without having to load up my PC or the inevitable crash if using this fossil of a phone my parents donated to me.
Now what I will say is that the Tab3 is more powerful than my PC. It can actually handle Youtube and web-browsing without crying. I installed a few language-learning apps on it, the more functional tablet-version of Telegram, and they work fine. The screen res is nice, the display is crisp and clear. The cameras probably suck, though I never used them much.
Now I have to qualify all that by saying the battery causes all sorts of problems. It frequently Continue reading →
Here are some printable graphics I made for a couple of scrapbooks I'm making. Some of them are completely original, some are recreations of elements I saw in other people's work. If anything looks too similar to a graphic you are the copyright holder of, just let me know, and I'll take it down. Some graphics use shapes/textures from openclipart.org, morguefile.com, webtreats.mysitemyway.com and another free graphics site, but I can't remember which one ๐
These are thumbnails. Click to see full-size. Right-click > Save Link As... to save the image. You can use these for digital scrapbooks, too, but you might want to add a drop-shadow. These were really designed for my physical scrapbooks. You might need to play around with your printer settings. I recommend creating a test-sheet first so you can see how colours translate from the screen to paper. I find that a gsm of between 100 and 130 is best for scrapbook graphics.
TOU: Non-commercial use only. Feel free to create derivative works for sharing, just don't claim credit as entirely your own. You don't have to link here, just don't pretend you made it from scratch.
(Clicky here to go straight to the supplemental Irish notes)
I've been studying Irish using Duolingo for 72 days now and I will say that I quite like it. Having said that, it has plenty of flaws. I started off on the app version, as going to the website on mobile was all ZOMG APP!!111 so I didn't even realise there was a web version at first.
The first thing I noticed was the lessons were not even lessons: they're just drills. The first few "lessons" were okay, but once it got to the more complex concepts, like lenition and eclipsis, there was no way on Earth I could have got the concept relying on the app alone. There was talk of a "Tips and Notes" section in the lesson discussions, only it turns out the most useful part of a language programme (i.e. the actual teaching bit) is completely omitted from the app and only available on the web version, which to me is a really, really big flaw.
Here are my new friend robins, Hoppy and Hoppily. Hoppy (the male) was easy to tame, but his mate took a lot longer to come around, and for a while I had to keep my face turned away from her to get her to eat from my hand. Hoppy is rather trusting now, and was happy to eat from my nephew's hand, also Hoppy tends to atttack anyone emerging from the house as he immediately assumes it's me with my worm box. Hoppily is very cheeky and will usually try to get worms out of the box rather than from me if she can.
I know, I can't believe either that it's taken me 10 years to know this is a thing, but, wow, way to go, EAxis. No one sucks quite like you do (Thoma$$ sucks more, but in a different way). So actual in-game non-cheatery functions can cause your hoods to implode. I've done some VBTs to my main playing hood, namely deleting sims from the bin and moving sims in their lots from one neighbourhood to another. So realising it's only a matter of time (although it could be a long time, who knows) before my hood turns into a BFBVFS, I thought it better to just extract my sims with SimSurgery and create a brand new hood and place a list of things not to do as the neighbourhood description. Since it's been years since I played any of my old families, I can't remember their stats anyway, so I'm fine with starting them again.
The problem is, EAxis insist on planting those premades into your family bin, and control freak that I am, I just don't want any playables that I didn't make in my main hood. I followed the safe(r) method tutorial to delete them only now neither of the two new households I created are ageing. I thought the problem was the recent installation of a lifespan mod but after testing it seems the problem is more likely the batbox stage of deleting sims as before that the sim was ageing fine. So my new supposed to be unborked hood is now borked even more than my worked neighbourhood. Way to go EA. If you had just had the sense to create a non-BFBVFS delete function this wouldn't even be an issue. So now that hood has to be scrapped too.
Splish, splash, splonk.
Wooden shoes, red socks,
Carvings, tombstones, and tranquillisers.
Aspirins and driving tests
Jet-planes and skeletons.
Frog singing to egg-timer.
Calendars and candles upside down,
Plastic apples on coconut trees.
Splish, splash, splonk.
A thing I made for my mum! I finally finished this on the 1st of March! It's made out of three shoeboxes reinforced with card, then paper machรฉd with newspaper and cooked-flour-paste. Painted with one coat of brilliant white emulsion, then acrylic paint. Embellished with half pearls and rhinestones.
I seem to have this terrible habit of killing off my protagonists' parents (count: 5/6 protagonists so far). Since Kiki has a song mourning the loss of her father, I thought it would be nice for Clarys to have a song too. I have no creativity: Clarys and Kiki both lost their mothers when they were babies, and then their fathers when they were children. I'm terrible.
Because I cannot compose melodies to save my life, I used this lovely lullaby sung by the amazing Erika Ferris. I hope it is not considered disrespectful to compose alternative lyrics for a traditional folk song.
Now I have a feeling my lyrics have grammatical/vocab mistakes in them. If any of them are a case of "This REALLY doesn't mean what you think it means," please do correct them. If, however, they can be excused by poetic licence and/or that fact that this song would have been written by a ten year old girl, please do so! Writing lyrics in a language you are not proficient in is hard enough, but to get them to fit to a melody is even harder. So please don't rain on my parade except to save me from looking stupid. If you want to record these, it's fine, but be sure to check with a native speaker that the lyrics are okay before you do ๐
I might draw a picture to go with this, but it's been a super long time since I drew a proper piece, so I dunno.
A quick note to say that McCall Smith has finally remembered that there was a man called Mr Polopetsi working for the agency. The backpedalling is actually quite funny! It's too late to save it! Your editors failed you and now everyone knows you forgot Mr Polopetsi.
SERIOUSLY. ONE OF YOUR STAFF LEAVING YOU WOULD BE A BIG DEAL. I NOTICED.
I honestly doubt he ever reads any of his fanmail. I remember shooting an email to his fanmail address about the mysterious disappearance of Mr Polopetsi, and that was waaaaaaay back in the Saturday Big Tent days. And I bet a few others must have done so, too. It's been four books since then :O
ETA: Now I see it, and I can't believe I never thought of this before. I bet he uses a ghostwriter. How else can he have so many continuity errors?
I tend to buy avocados, and then not eat them. Anyway, this time, I decided to be serious about planting the seed and seeing if I could get it to germinate.
Online there's all this long stuff about toothpicks and jars of water, who has the time? So I just chucked it in a pot of compost, left it on my windowsill and kept it moist. After about two months, there was nothing happening โ or so it seemed. When I started to empty the pot, the seed had cracked and a root was growing out! So back into the pot it went, a quick prayer that I hadn't killed it, and after a couple more weeks, I was rewarded with this!
