Beware of dodgy commentors!!

Someone new commented on my blog today and I, as usual, followed their link to see what their blog was like. It appeared to be an older Malaysian gentleman and all or most of the blog was in Bahasa Malay with a load of followers shown right in the centre of the page. I'm describing this in detail because if you come across it, get out of there quickly!
I think it was when I clicked on his profile that it sent a stupid annoying virus to my computer which turns the volume right up and moos and baas and whistles. I don't know how to get rid of it and I'm bloody annoyed as I just bought this new computer two days ago. I hope one of my IT mates can help me sort it out. Until then I've got a stupid barnyard going on on my computer.
By the way, I do have anti-virus software installed and I also use comment moderation. But it happened when I clicked on the commentor's name to go to his blog. Sorry I don't have the name because I deleted it before I thought to report him, duh!
Be careful!

Why I should never write poetry

Oh green tea,
how I love thee.
Your antioxidant power,
makes me stronger by the hour.
For good health, surely, you are the key.
(Along with a little dark chocolate)

Nostalgic food #356. Pizza Toast

Pizza toast!
Originally uploaded by Shanti, shanti

Remember the days of living on nothing but beer, chips and tea with the odd kebab thrown in for stamina on a night out? In England we had pretty much anything on toast and cheap (yucky!) white bread was only pence a loaf.

I used to go round my (now) husband's house and they'd be eating "sauce sarnies". Yes, you've guessed it, any sauce they had in the fridge like brown sauce, tomato sauce, and/ or salad cream would go between two slices of Spar's cheapest. On a good night they'd buy a bag of chips between four of them and a few of those would go into the mix.

At my house we were civilised in that we used fire. By that I mean, we toasted our bread. It's be toast with tomato puree and cheese. But, if we were lucky, someone would have some cheap dried "herbes de Province" and those would get sprinkled on. Pure luxury!

So the other day I was in the mood for a bit of nostalgic eating but I decided to make it a bit more posh. Wholegrain toast, leftover tomato sauce from spaghetti, real cheese and fresh toms with a bunch of herbs inside. On the side I had, shock horror, some green salad. Both the nostalgic me and the grown up me were satisfied.

Two days later Mr. P made me this. I guess he's grown up too!

Sand animation

only I want to call it 'sandimation', but I'll resist. This video is so amazing that I had to steal it from Tina's blog, who I think might've stolen it from someone else's blog, and the love goes on...
Kseniya Simonova was the winner of the Ukraine's Got Talent contest.

It's about time...

...for me to learn how to use my camera properly. Seriously, I've never learned how to use it properly and just fumble round with buttons until I get some sort of result, or worse, the opportunity is gone. I've somehow picked up this vague notion of adjusting for light conditions, but it was a few years back when I used film. In fact, I guess that's my problem. I was just getting the hang of film and then I got my DSLR in Japan and made the changeover about 4 years ago, but have never got to grips with the technology. And this extends to Photoshop.

I like to joke that hey, my photos are all natural. None have been touched up. The truth is it's only because I've got no idea how to use Photoshop. I've got a digital camera in my mitts, but my head is stuck in the film era.
The final straw was when I needed to write a bio and send a photo of myself for an article I recently wrote for matador.com. I looked in my files for a pic of me and proceeded to search for Photoshop on my computer. It had pretty much buried itself in the 'never used files' basement of my computer.

OK, I've got the thing open...OK, I've got the photo on the table...now crop, crop...hmmmmmmm? Right! I've found it! God, I'm such a dork! OK, I've cropped the photo to the needed size and save. Shit! No! Dammit! I fricking went and rewrote the original file, didn't I? Since it was a photo a student had taken of me in Thailand I guess I now have to practice some serious Buddhist non-attachment and say goodbye to that one.

There are two community ed programmes within driving distance of my house and I hope one of them has a teacher who is up for a challenge.

A little something for the writer on the go

One of my Twitter contacts just Tweeted this. If you live in the normal world, you can get it as an app for your iPhone. If you live in New Zealand where we are afraid of such high fallutin' technology mumbo jumbo, you can just use it on the net so that you don't have to look after random flash drives. Basically it means you can write or blog on your work computer and not have to email it to yourself, which is what I tend to do.
Check it out here.

Do not adjust your set

The following is a test...