Author Archives: Silver Arrows

Windows Secret Settings

Old, but funny

It would explain a lot, huh 😉 Like this:

Asbo Barbie

I couldn't have thought this up myself!

From Private Eye

More Skywatching

Quick sky notes. 04.00 Universal time, looking south.

A lovely view of Orion and Canis Major. Very bad seeing this morning, Sirius was flickering so badly it looked red. I tried to swing it like Dr Bates said, but it still flickered like anything. Oh well. I also saw two planets, which I guessed were Mars and Venus (and I was right, surprisingly!). Venus looked crescent-shaped through binoculars, but it's hard to tell for sure as my binoculars are meant for birdwatching, not skywatching. Aldebaran in Taurus, Canis Minor, Auriga and Gemini were also visible. Nice view of the Pleiades, but it looked like a small blue cloud with my crummy eyes. Argh! another reason I need to see a Bates teacher!

Zoomed in:

Continue reading →

Cat-erole

From metro.co.uk. Don't be getting on your high horse, now. This is no different from eating chicken or rabbit.

Cat-erole for dinner?

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Fancy this for your dinner?

An Australian chef's curiosity has definitely killed several cats – and turned the nation's wild moggies into evening meals.

Feral cats roaming the Outback are being increasingly caught and cooked, and transformed into casseroles or stews.

Children's author Kat Kessing (yes, that's her real name) says the recipes are not only appetising but can also cut down the death and destruction caused by wild cats.

But critics say the concoctions are in very poor taste – in more ways than one.

Ms Kessing has been turning cats into food for 15 years, after managing to trap one near her Alice Springs home.

She said: 'When I started to skin and gut it, I thought the meat looked quite nice. And I knew the Aboriginal mob roasted them on the fire and liked them.

'I thought I'd have a go too – so I made a cat-erole.'

But she has only just publicly introduced her favourite recipe for sautéed cat, at an Outback food contest.

The meal involves chopping and browning two small feral cats, adding dashes of lemongrass, salt, pepper, wild peach, spinach leaves and mistletoe berries, and cooking on high heat for five hours.

Ms Kessing, 57, has also been working on extended menus, including roast cat and cat sausages.

She describes the taste as a cross between rabbit meat and chicken.

But it's not to everyone's taste.

Competition organiser Linda Chellew said: 'The judges all just bit the bullet and ate the cat.

'I had to very politely go and spit it out in the back room because I couldn't break it down – it was pretty tough.'

ROFL! This is great! If only they'd start a trend over here XD

More on Natural Eyesight Improvement

A few more ramblings on the Bates method for better eyesight...

Think of it this way: if you've had your legs in a cast for 4 months, you will not expect, after one or two days' physio, to be able to walk perfectly. Your eyes are also controlled by muscles. You can't expect, after torturing your eyes for months, or even decades, to be able to see perfectly after a day of Bates treatment. Be patient. This does entail a bit of hard slog, but I think you'll find it's worth it in the end.

I shall mention here the words of another eye-specialist, Joseph J. Kennebeck O.D., who later came to reject the orthodox teaching that the lens is the determining factor in accommodation:

No one is blind without glasses. Anyone who can see with glasses can also see, in a way, without them, at least well enough to get along until his eyes improve. Only the blind ARE blind, and they cannot see even with glasses. Too many of them are blind from wearing glasses. Let it be understood that near-sighted eyes can do close work easily without glasses.

The severe cases of today were the mild cases of yesterday, just as the mild cases of today will be the severe cases of tomorrow, from wearing glasses. There are eye troubles — that is true — but no one is so bad in the beginning that he has to resort to glasses and wear them as he does, to supposedly see with or to supposedly save his eyes. One might be able to see with glasses until they need changing, but the glasses will not save his eyes. Of course if one does not live very long, it makes little or no difference if he wears glasses, but no one knows how long one will live. If one lives to a ripe old age, he will have the poorest eyes, at middle age and past, if he wore glasses before. Therefore, one must fight off glasses at a younger age to have the best eyes at an older age. One cannot wait until it is too late to do it. No one would be hurt by fighting off glasses, as much as all are hurt who resort to glasses.

Loyalty to the old tradition of glasses is widespread, and practically universal. As said before, all must save face and not be proven wrong in what all have believed in throughout the years. If all were as loyal and true to their eyes as they are to glasses, all would be better off in the long run. But all have more confidence in glasses, and less confidence in their eyes; too bad. Those who wear glasses think that they are wiser than those who do not, and will not, wear them. Why be so loyal to glasses, when glasses are not loyal to eyes?

More on eyesight improvement at I-See.org

Why You Should Not Submit to TSR

It's only now that I've left TSR that I realise just how many disadvantages there are to submitting your work to that site. Now obviously with the custom content, you have no control of it once it get published: you can't edit or delete your creations at all without first clearing it with a moderator (every other community site I know of allows submitters to modify and update their creations at any time). This means that if you find a problem with something you uploaded, rather than just reuploading the file/screenshot, you have to sort it all out with a mod first, and even then you have no guarantee that you'll be allowed. And of course, they never ever allow you to remove your uploads. In other words, they are quite happy to keep your files on their servers without your permission, but if you share their pay files without their permission, you're evil and deserve a ban. Hypocrites.

As well, the free artists upload their work because they want to share, TSR wants the free artists to upload so they can lure more visitors, and therefore have more potential subscribers. In other words, TSR are exploiting you for profit, nothing more.

Hosting my files elsewhere means I now get total control of my custom content, but I think the biggest advantage of having an independent site is that I also get complete control over my stories. One thing that peed me off a lot about TSR's story-hosting was just how hard it is for an author to continue to perfect their work after it was published. When I edited and reuploaded part 1 of Jasmine's story, after waiting over a week for the story to be approved (they never took more than 2 days ordinarily) I thought something must have gone wrong, so I reuploaded again, only for all my feedback to get deleted and to have to then re-upload once more for it to work. So you have to go through all that hassle just to make a few minor changes to a story. It makes me wonder how I ever stood for it! Now that I'm in complete control of my stories, I am free to modify screenshots when I want, I can add and delete scenes any time and make those all-important typo corrections and minor tweaks...whenever I like. Something you will never get with TSR.

(Fanseelamb put it much better than I did.)

They Don’t Make ’Em Like They Used To

They really don't know how to make good cartoons nowadays. So here are my top 3 kids' shows from bygone times...

1. The Mysterious Cities of Gold

mcog

This is undoubtedly the best cartoon ever made, and if you disagree with me, it means you never watched it 😉

MCoG is set in 1532 and follows Esteban, a twelve year old orphan boy from the Americas. Continue reading →

Alpha Canis Majoris

AKA Sirius, the brightest star in the sky

Canis Major has always been a kind of special constellation for me, along with other favourites like Lyra, Cygnus, Orion and Boötes. It was amongst the first constellations I identified. Sirius (alpha [a] canis majoris) is the brightest star in the sky at magnitude -1.4, which makes is quite easy to identify, even in bright city skies. Canis Major is located east of Orion, and if you follow Orion's three belt stars down you will find Sirius.

Traditinally, Sirius was pronounced with a long i, and was sometimes spelt "Syrius".

Historically, many cultures have attached special significance to Sirius. Sirius was worshipped as Sothis in the valley of the Nile long before Rome was founded. The Middle Kingdom of Egyptians based their calendar on the heliacal rising of Sirius, which occurred just before the annual flooding of the Nile and the summer solstice. In Greek mythology, Orion’s dog became Sirius. The Greeks also associated Sirius with the heat of summer: they called it Σείριος Seirios, often translated "the scorcher." The dog days of summer were also connected to Sirius.

And you'll understand the significance of this just as soon as I've finished part 2 of Lana's story. I don't know when that will be.

Silver’s Sim Stuff FAQs (Merged)

Silver's Sim Stuff FAQ

Q. Can I use your custom content on sims/lots I upload to another site?
Sure, on 100% free sites (yes, even the Exchange) and you properly credit me and include a link back to here. Also please leave a message on my guestbook/CC pages to let me know!

I do not want my work on sites that charge for content in any way, whether directly charging or through a subscription. Voluntary donation sites (like WNF, InSim, etc) are fine, "donation set" sites are not! And under no circumstances may you put anything of mine on The Sims Resource; I don't care if it's in the free section. No TSR and this is not negotiable.