Big Shout Going Out.

For James and Faye of Palace Fan who is going to be a Dad. It appears that junior season ticket holder is going to make an almost on schedule appearance, but at the time of blogging is taking a bit of time about it.

Killing An Arab

It was actually a wheeze thought up by Jo Nicholls. Everyone drop into their post Transpocalyse reports a mention of Siobhan and the Arab to see what would happen. People did, Siobhan bit and it was great and now it's over. But I've had the Cure song running through my head ever since the weekend, hence the title.

When we hit the bar next door to the hotel, Milano's at 6:35 I heard a disheartened wail from Becky, "We are the only one's here"

"Sit down, don't worry, I'll get us a drink, they are just being fashionably late"

For a wee while Becky was "the only tranny in Milano's" but eventually the rest started to arrive.

All in all only staggering over to the Chinese restaurant 20 minutes later than we said we would was pretty impressive. The larger the group the higher the cat herding properties are, tranny or non tranny.

I've seen office does fall through because it is impossible to get 10 people organised enough to go out on the same night and we all live in the same area. That Becky managed to get a group of about 20 people from all across the country into the restaurant less than an hour late is stunning.

There isn't much more to say really that hasn't been said by now, it was great to meet people who I've only seen as pixels on a monitor. And it was especially nice to meet Steph Angel's partner Tracy, it's women like her and mini Sophie who remind me that I'm not mad or weird or wrong for enjoying going out with a tranny.

Transpocka transpolcays transapoc Birmingham

I'm still recovering from the self inflicted headache I woke up with morning. Transpocalypse was a resounding success I think a good time was had by all and we certainly gave a lot of people in the Chinese restaurant something to talk about on Monday at work.

I'm still sorting out the photos which can be found here I will try to write out a fuller report on Monday once my head has finally stopped pounding.

Becky should be congratulated on organising such a splendid do, but just one thing Bex, please next time choose a name that I can spell ;-)

It's snowing

It snowing - well it's trying to. The office is trying to decide whether a couple of small flakes make a flurry.

I say no.

It is bitterly cold though, my plans for what am going to wear tomorrow night in Birmingham are rapidly changing, from a skimpy top to thermal undies from Damart and a more Nanook of the North look.

10,000

I've had my 10,000th visitor today.

like my 5,000th visitor it was a brief look see and off again, never mind.

However my 9,999th visitor was my friend Charlotte I recognised her work's ISP.

Today's Should Have Been Working came from:-

The Constuction Industry Training Board they were looking for the phone number of the newly opened King's Lynn branch of Frankie and Benny's. I am the number one result in the world for "frankie and bennies - kings lynn - telephone number" it's things like that that makes being a blogger worthwhile. Anyway being an obliging person here is the number:- 01553 666 300 please don't all book at once apparently it has been chocka since it opened.

Flock

Flock is the new pre beta web browser that there has been a bit of a buzz about recently, it hopes to reinvent how we use the web by integrating common tools together. I am already thinking that I could get very used to their approach to blogging. Instead of having to go through several screens on blogger you can press a button in the top bar of the browser screen and a window pops up which you can compose and edit from. The link creation is not as easy as it is in blogger but I'm sure they are working on that. The really neat thing is that I can view all the public photos in my flickr stream and drag and drop it into the body of this post so that it can be seen after publishing. There seems to be a lack of formatting tools for the pictures, the spell check doesn't work yet and I can't find how to preview but I'm loving the drag and drop facility so far. But the test is in the posting so here goes.

Taking over the world

Taking over the world
Originally uploaded by janegoth.

Been Shopping

Went shopping in King's Lynn with Becky this weekend we wandered about in the Next shop that has just opened. I tried on some tops but wasn't impressed. Becky, however, was more successful she saw, I modelled, she ummm and ahhed, she bought. I was luckier in TK Maxx I got a shrug/bolero-jacket type thingy while Bex wandered around waiting for inspiration to hit but it didn't.

The reason for this shopping splurge?

Well the Christmas season is on us and I have a do each weekend up to the Christmas and while I have more than enough clothes to cover all the dos. All the clothes I have have been to parties more than once. I am not royalty I do not have to worry about wearing a new outfit everytime. But is nice to vary the outfits a bit and the golden rule of dressing on the cheap is have a few basics and accessorise accessorise accessorise; be it with handbags, scarves/shawls, venues and if necessary and you're really ruthless - boyfriends.

This weekend we have Transpocalypse the blogging event of the year. A get together of Tranny Bloggers, tranny friendly bloggers (that will be me) and partners (oooh that will be me again then.) Birmingham will not know what has hit it. For this event I do not have to worry too much about what I'm going to wear because I'm not going to be the one who gets all the attraction. I've noticed this before when I met Becky at the Cambridge Pink Picnic back in August.

People would come up to talk to Bex but almost totally ignore me I could have been wearing a burka. It was a bit like that when we went out in Nottingham. I don't mind, it is natural I suppose after all to most people trannies are exotic, glamorous, strange creatures often heard about but rarely knowingly met. 30 something women are ten a penny. It was different at Angelic it was much more like a "normal" evening out but that's for another blog post I think.

Mark E Smith Vs the Football Results.

I look ill, but I don't care about it...: HIT THE NORTH STAND!

One for all you Fall Fans out there, follow the link to see the video of Mark E Smith reading the football results out.

Wednesday lost that's all you need to know.

Spotted by Derby Blogger and good bloke Gaz.

30/10/06 - Update

The original site that was on has gone.

Information Rich - Cash Poor?

If like me you can't afford a PDA or can't really justify one, here comes a low cost solution to the problem.

As seen on Informationally Overloaded.

Who You're Gonna Call?

Watched Ghostbusters this evening with Becky. I had forgotten how good a film it was, it has stood the test of time, ok some of the special effects look a tad ropey today but the humour is still sharp.

Favourite line:

"Ray, when someone asks if you're a God, you say "Yes"!"

$100

The prototype of a $100 (£75) wind up lap top was shown off at the UN IT summit in Tunisia yesterday*, a nice feel good story to distract us all from the potential row about who regulates/"owns" the internet.

The lap top has been designed with the world's poorest children in mind. It will "let children interact with each other while learning." Very laudable however on a list of priorities for expenditure it must be towards the bottom.

When whole swathes of the poor do not have access to running clean water, enough food, adequate sanitation, healthcare let alone education to teach the children to read, a skill required to make these machines useful. Which family is going to spend money on these lap tops? What use are they to communities who are not able to meet the most basic needs except as something to barter for food. What about internet access? The software licenses? Who will pay for those, who will ensure the educational material will be available on line in the local languages.

Don't get me wrong I think that they are a nifty idea but I do not believe that they will directly help the very poorest in the world (and I have doubts about indirectly as well). If they ever go into full scale production the machines will probably end up being used in the schools and universities across the developing world and as toys for us in the first world.

*will insert a link when I get home for some reason the system at work doesn't like blogger very much, I will also spell check! Mind you could turn this into a form of interaction with the bloggisphere. If anyone spots a spelling mistake they could tell me. British spelling only please.

What would be cool...

Would be if you could play 6 degrees of seperation on last.fm with the "neighbours" list.

I don't think it would be possible to do by hand but it must be possible to do by machine?

Any ideas anyone.?

AP American History

As I have mentioned before I used to live in the USA. I went to school there for a year, I was in the 12th grade. As I had just finished my o levels and would be going back to start VIth form in Britain when we returned it didn't really matter what I studied apart from maths physics and chemistry as that's what I was going to do for A level.

As I didn't have to worry about graduating from high school I didn't have to bother about taking English or any other subject, I could study what I liked.

Well almost.

Because I hadn't studied any humanities at O level, it was decided by my parents and the school, that it would be a good idea if I studied American History and because I would only be doing one year of it I should do AP American History a college level course - from a standing start of no knowledge except what I had picked up here and there.

It didn't help that the teacher and I immediately took a scunner to each other because we disagreed on almost everything. He used to talk about "socialized medicine" with disdain and a sneer, I said that the NHS made me feel proud to be British.

We spent most of our time talking about current affairs rather than history and when I did read my history book I tended to miss out the battles because I found the descriptions too confusing to follow.

I had done better than everyone expected in the mock exam so we paid for me to sit the exam. However I still wasn't really the best prepared for the exam or the most motivated either. But in the exam itself I was gifted the most unexpected banker of a question.

"Discuss the rise of feminism in the 20th Century."

The couple we were renting our house from, had loads of feminist books which I had read avidly, I didn't know much about American anti discrimatory laws but I did know about the British Acts and about woman's suffrage here. My essay on the subject was a masterly bit of comparing and contrasting the development of feminism in both the UK and the USA.

I was rather pleased with it. But I didn't think I had done that well in the other parts of the exam imagine my pleasure when the results came through shortly before we were due to go home.

I had got a 4 (5 being the highest mark)

They are scary

Apparently some people don't think the new cybermen are scary enough - Tranniefesto pah Doctor Who fans these days, don't know they are born ;-) In my day we had to make our own terror, the image on the screen was that full of snow.

Oooh Cybermen

Forget housekeeping just look at this - can hardly wait.

Housekeeping.

Sometimes I cringe with embarrassment when I get a random search hit predicated on someone else can't spell the word either. I've said before that I'm dyslexic so approach to spelling is sometimes "lets throw the letters down on the paper/screen and see what we get" and I use spell check but obviously some get away.

So instead of a proper blog tonight where I could tell you about the too-soft-bed and why it is like that I'm going to be mostly hunting for spelling mistakes and broken links.

Last.fm

I discovered two rather wonderful new things, well they were mentioned on plasticbag.org and I paid attention this time. last.fm and Audioscrobbler

last.fm is an online radio station or I should say multiple radio stations as you can choose from what seems to be many thousands of music streams. The streams can be by tag, based on the collective taste of a group you might be in or your own personal radio based on what you listen to on last.fm or, and this is the clever bit through audioscrobbler a plug in that monitors what music you're playing on your PC it can build up a database of your taste. In a similar way, but I believe a tad more sophisticated, to how Amazon makes recommendations for purchasing. As the list of music that you listen to on your computer or one of the radio streams builds up it starts to make recommendations, through listing "musical neighbours" who will have similar tastes to you and what it plays on your radio station.

I'm still getting my head round how it all works, the FAQs and Help could do with a bit of expansion to cover every button that can be pushed and even though I'm viewing in Firefox the site sometimes looks awful as the google ads sometimes bleed over into a neighbouring section of the page. These are minor quibbles though, so far I think it is a lovely lovely thing. I've listened to the alternative, indie, trance and techno streams and joined a couple of groups. I can see last.fm seriously challenging Radios 4 and 5 for my listening time.

I like particularly like the radio stream by tag. Like flickr the tagging is done by the general public so occasionally get a weird one. I've been listening to the new wave stream and just had Outkast - Rosa Parks because someone has tagged it as new wave. Kewl!

If you want to mock my musical tastes here is a link to me. The other really cool thing about last.fm is that it's British and doesn't belong to either Google or Yahoo (yet). Oh and it's free.

Quiz

I don't normally post these things up nowadays but it's the first time I've seen the political compass methodology applied to religion.

Can't argue with the results either.

You fit in with: Atheism Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Atheist. You have very little faith and you are very focused on intellectual endeavors. You value objective proof over intuition or subjective thoughts. You enjoy talking about ideas and tend to have a lot of in depth conversations with people. 100% scientific. 60% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Blogs in the Guardian.

The Guardian seems to be very into the blogging phenomena at the moment. The editor has a blog, they have various "Blogs" covering technology, the news, culture, business and games. Each day on page 2 there is a small section called "Today On The Web" which culls comments from blogs about a newsworthy topic.

It all feels very forced. The "Blogs" don't feel like blogs they feel like a cross between a newspaper column that has been put on line and the spam blogs you find if you click through "next blog" for any length of time on Blogger.

The Today on the Web section is irksome because any fule can do a search on a phrase and come up with 3 to 4 coherent snatches of writing on a subject. It is money for old rope, I could do that and I haven't got a degree in journalism.

They seemed to have missed a trick although I will stand by my argument that blogging is not the new journalism it does have a role whether that be social commentary, in creating an online community such as the trannisphere or communicating with far flung family. In fact I can see the Christmas blog entry will be the round robin letter of 2005 and they are not capturing that.

However I do have to say it isn't all bad as they did mention Becky's Hamster Flickr Sudoku the other day in the online News Blog.

I will put the necessary links in later, I can't right now as I haven't worked out how to copy URLs on this tablet I'm blogging on. The Tablet is Jessica's. Becky and I and Jess of course are staying at Sophie's for the weekend.

Postscript 6 November 2005 have inserted the links.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Editor free after Kemp 'assault'

The Editor is Rebekah Wade of The Sun and Ross Kemp's wife. Does anyone want to bet which page of the Mirror this will appear on and which page of the Sun it will appear on if it appears at all.
When I heard this on the news I went "Oooh couldn't have happened to a nicer person" Wade not Kemp, sarcasm being my first reaction. I also wanted to snigger what with Ross Kemp's supposed hard man image. But we wouldn't have done so if it had been the other way round, if Ross Kemp had been held for alleged assault against his wife. No one should have to put up with domestic violence and remember it can happen to men as well.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Editor free after Kemp 'assault'

Other News - The Doctor Who Christmas Special will be shown on Christmas Day.

Poppy Appeal

First off, I must thank Charlotte for blogging about the cyber poppy otherwise I would not have know about it.

The Royal British Legion was founded to support ex service men and women who need that support. Their main fund raising and awareness drive is the sale of poppies in the days up to 11th November - Remembrance Day, the day marked in Britain as the day to remember the war dead.
The British Legion provides help and assistance in many ways these are some of the stats I nicked from saw on their website.

Some 11 million people in the UK are eligible to ask for its help.

You don't have to be a Legion member to receive assistance but you must be an ex-Serviceperson or a dependent.

Anyone who has been in the British Armed Forced for seven days or more (and their dependents) is eligible for help.

People as young as 17.5 years can be sent on active service, so veterans are often much younger than people realise.

Each year the Legion answers 300,000 calls for help to its helpline, Legionline.

It helps with a huge range of issues, including counselling, job retraining, skills assessment, getting the right pensions and benefits, advice and interest free loans for setting up small businesses, welfare grants, Remembrance Travel to war graves, convalescent and nursing care, and home and hospital visits.

In 2004 the Legion spent over £59 million on its work.

I have a very personal and good reason to wear a poppy. My Grandmother's father was gassed in the first world war he survived but his health was never the same, he and his family were helped by the British Legion. My Grandmother met my Grandfather because he was helped by the legion as he caught TB whilst in the Army and was sent to Preston Hall in Kent where my Grandmother and her family lived in the British Legion Village.

Unfortunately the need for the British Legion has not gone away, so please consider getting a poppy this year.

All Saints Day

I know they are angels not saints.

All Saints Day is a Holy Day of Obligation within the Catholic Church when I was at school we would troop into the Assembly Hall for Mass with singing, guitars and bad poems read with lisps. The head of RE would gurn madly as he tried to encourage us to join in and "really worship" It was pitiful, he had a bad beard and wore worse sweaters, the hymns we had to sing were mostly in the "modern pop style" (think bad 50s folk). Communion would take for ever as almost all the 750 pupils at my school were able to take communion and not doing so just because you didn't feel like it or didn't believe in god was frowned upon if you had been baptised Catholic that is, those who were not couldn't take communion even if they wanted to.

It was awful I loathed it, it helped me to come to the conclusion that I didn't believe in a god.

Once in Sixth form we had to suffer through a Christian "Rock Band" at least it was ecumenical suffering as the sixth form was a joint one with the C of E school up the road.

The 1st of January used to be a Holy Day of Obligation in the United Kingdom as well it was probably one of the least well kept days, it struck a lot of people as the Church being killjoys about New Years Eve, a secular celebration.