Sep

28

Don’t squirt that cloud of marketing lingo anywhere near me.

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

I don’t pretend to pay attention — in fact, I rarely wear fragrance beyond the chemical-clean scent of my deodorant — but there are some really bad and/or inappropriate perfume names out there. I just came across ‘Insolence’ by Guerlain. Insolence? For real? Should anyone douse [almost typed dowse, and in doing so would’ve constructed a more imaginative question] her body with — as quoted from the dictionary — “showing a rude and arrogant lack of respect”?*

Here’s the sales pitch from the perfume website:

INSOLENCE is the sparkle in the eye of a care-free spirit; a fearless smile, a silence that expresses many thoughts. It’s a casual grace, an ironic elegance. It is panache, verve and spirit; it is the new Guerlain feminine fragrance: INSOLENCE.
The INSOLENT woman? She is audacious. She makes her own choices and dances to a different tune. Free, spontaneous and truly herself, this utterly irresistable woman does not conform to stereotypes.
She is INSOLENCE!

Um. What the crap is that all about? That isn’t even close to the definition of insolence! That’s like saying, “TREPIDATION the scent of adventure! Spirited and care-free. The woman of courage smells of TREPIDATION!”

Colour me rhetorical, but why do we even have dictionaries anymore. Is the perfume industry out of names much like the automotive industry? I want to see the rejection list from these people… I’m fantasising about it containing words like: egregious, innocuous, pythagorean, bucolic, gauche, transitive… Now I’m fantasising about a spoof website, but knowing I’m far too lazy/forgetful to create one surrounding this. (Though if you do, a credit would be nice. Cheers.)

Would anyone care to add to the worst fragrance names? Do comment if the wild and untamed spirit of TREPIDATION moves you.

*(also defined similarly here)

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Sep

25

RT: Tuesday, 25 September 2007

Filed Under RT: Random Thoughts, tout le fromage | 6 Comments

I was just flicking through some pages on flickr (an appropriate verb, eh) and realised that we—in a generation sense—are not passing shoe boxes of photos on to our children, grandchildren, or treasured friends. We’ve got flickr pages and iPhoto libraries, whereas our parents and parent’s parents had fewer but more precious photos of the lives they lived. The death of patina-tinted card stock prints in sepia or cracked silver tones is upon us. Even the rosy or golden-hued 110 film prints of my own youth are the last of their kind.

When we pass on our treasured memories, will they be merely emailed URLs from which our loved ones will download images, process in Photoshop to meet their desired output or decorating tastes, and then click away from in favour of some shopping at Amazon? When a URL expires, does the memory of us expire too? Will you un-Bookmark me when I’m gone?

With the cheap and ready convenience of digital cameras, have we so flooded our lives with computer images that no one will carry precious photos in lockets anymore or use quaint photo corners in black-paged albums. We have more photos but less to pass on. Should we start saving money so that designated individuals or companies can keep our websites up for perpetuity just as graves or monuments can be looked after through special financial arrangements?

Have we replaced wallet photos with mobile phone background images?

I think I’m feeling nostalgic and decidedly analogue this evening.

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Sep

24

Thank you, American economy

Filed Under expat, regular, tout le fromage | 5 Comments

I’ve just spent the morning hanging out with our bank, then chatting long-distance with several staff members of my American credit card, and now have a big fat cheque on its way to the US to free us from the last of my US financial burdens.

We’ve been watching the US dollar exchange rate for about a year and the time is right to use the roughly 2:1 ratio to our advantage. Our bank was able to give us $1.9898 to the £1. Not too shabby. Makes debt a whole lot less painful if you can essentially cut it in half, let me tell you.

What a day. We’ve been clearing debts on both sides of the ocean and still have enough for the Tesco delivery. Life is good and getting better all the time! Hooray! :D

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Sep

21

London burning

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | 5 Comments

reDSC00061.jpg
London at sunset - Big Ben on the left.

Some new photos up on my flickr page.

This grouping includes photos from the evening Alex and I hung out, ate pizza, and drank wine in London, as well as another old shot of me with blue hair (because I like it).

Enjoy!

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Sep

20

Faith in our future sponge bath administrators restored, somewhat

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Turns out, one of the two work experience kids has done a 180 to achieve a level or two above tolerable. In fact, though we all thought a two week stint was excessive, it seems that giving the guys ten days brought the best attitude and abilities to the surface, whereas if they had left after last Friday, neither would have gone away with anything useful (or positive marks for school).

As I said, one of the two is shining now, and wouldn’t you know, it’s the kid I wanted to kick last week. (The other one just stopped showing up and complained to the end about how crap and boring and pointless the job is. Nice one. I actually love my job, thanks.) The one who remains? I actually hope he manages to get some part-time work out of the company. He’s doing that well now. I am so very pleasantly surprised!

Of course, it didn’t hurt for him to be totally shocked that I’m ten years older than he’d guessed. (He clearly didn’t do the math about my shoes the other day.)
“Wow! I thought you were in your early twenties! You’re two years older than my mom and she doesn’t look  nearly as good as you.”

Oh, dear boy, you can stay. Oh yes. Stay. I could get used to this… Pass me my moisturiser, will you?

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Sep

19

Flowers in Warwick

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

Neil and I went to Warwick a couple of weeks ago.

reIMG_4400.jpg

I’ve posted some of the flower pictures up on my flickr page.

I am SO behind in getting photos processed and posted…

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Sep

17

Geek pain and pleasure

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 6 Comments

I never open Terminal to have a play; it’s always out of necessity. Saying that, some twisted little geek inside me masochistically enjoys having to open up the hood to poke around in UNIX from time to time.

It started with this: I was doing a file transfer earlier today (a movie file) to the network drive attached to the NSLU2 device. The wireless dropped out. File stalled. Then began the fun…

The drive thought the file was still in use. Resource busy. Permissions denied. Couldn’t delete the file. Couldn’t overwrite the file. This went around and around. Absolutely maddening.

Suffice it to say that my eyes and brain are on fire after trying for hours to get the permissions changed and the file deleted whilst avoiding messing around with scary sounding things like exportfs exports or unexports on the NFS directories. That goes a bit deeper into UNIX than my comfort level covers. I finally did it with a combination of commands that I could not possibly retrace here. But I’m not giving a tutorial— just typing a post of relief. (I’m the last person you want to learn UNIX from.)

I’m now transfering a fresh copy of the file over to the network drive. My ankles are crossed as my fingers are too busy typing this to assume the lucky position. I should probably not be tempting fate by doing this transfer via wireless again—goodness knows, I’ve got ethernet cables to spare—but I am. Some little masochistic geek inside is willing to take the risk, especially if it means I might get another crack at playing around in Terminal. ;)

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Sep

17

Erm, no. Still not interested in Facebook. Ta.

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

Just got this sent to me…
Facebookim-1
Apparently, I can’t keep up with my friends without Facebook.
I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but either the person that sent this to me doesn’t keep up on my blog (or else would know that I’m a bit anti-Facebook) or the Borgbook just sends this stuff out without you noticing or giving you an appropriate opt-out. I’ve spoken to the sender once in the last year (a chance meeting at that) and so I’m suspicious as to whether there is an override for sending out bot instant messages. Anybody know?

So really…

Facebook: leave me alone. I still don’t need you. I still don’t want you. Real friends can manage just fine without hanging out in pseudo-social networks.

While I’m at it—
SecondLife: stop spamming me with stuff too. I haven’t been active in SL for over a year, and when I was, I got bored after making an avatar and learning to fly. That time = about an hour. Give up, will ya?

Sheesh. Thank goodness I outgrew peer pressure a long, long time ago.

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