A top aide to the US vice-president has resigned after being charged with perjury over an investigation into the unmasking of a covert CIA agent.

Go visit my Gallery to see the new pictures I've put up and maybe download one of the new desktop wallpapers if you're interested.

Back from holiday, but still catching up. We've had the floors redone (which is part of why we went away, heh), and moved a bunch of stuff, and we ended up moving a LOT of stuff around, including Andrew and myself switching rooms with the kids for various reasons. We're still sorting through... well, a lot of stuff...

I do have lots of pictures to share once I get a minute to get to it, but everything's kind of up in the air at the moment, including my computer. The old desk I had was suspiciously and uncomfortably wobbly when we went to move it back and so we went out and bought a new desk, but it won't be delivered until Monday, and in the meantime I'm using an old wooden desk (an actual desk, not a computer hutch or desk or anything of that sort) with just the minimum of things hooked up and/or installed (no printer/scanner, for example, and the external DVD drive isn't hooked up, the pen tablet isn't installed, etc.).

ANYway, pictures coming soonish, and my new desk coming eventually, and the house sorted and put away.... uhm.... soon, I hope....

We're going on holiday to Bendigo and Swan Hill for a few days. We'll be actually leaving on Sunday, but I might not be online much between now and then, and I won't be back online until Thursday at the earliest, and possibly Friday, and I furthermore probably won't be answering mail or any of that stuff until the weekend after we're back.

I will, however, have lots of picture of the Wimmera District of Victoria and various towns and places along the journey, so, hey, you have that to look forward to in my absence, right? (Because I just know how much y'all hang on my every written word and stuff, and yes, I'm being sardonic.)

Anyway, if you're waiting to hear from me or wondering where I am or whatever, that's the answer. I'm on holiday! Yay!

Evil-wishers are always around to spread rumors.

no insanity in the
madhouse
windward conspiracy
imagine what I can show you!
Logo and Identity
Please don't forget
Be happy

Christie's won the right to sell a £10 million art collection by beating rivals Sotheby's at 'scissors, paper, rock'.

(And I can't help but think of the South Park episode where Cartman is going around saying to people, "I'll rochambeaux you for it!")

It was really quite warm today, at least outside (inside, it's still pleasant; it takes ages for the house to get hot inside). It's definitely springtime in Melbourne. Beautiful sunny day, and the forecast for tomorrow is similar.

Mmmmm. Spring.

I wasn't crazy about the orange hair, so I did a bit of fixing (basically, I just colored it all over with an ash blonde, which didn't change the level of color but the ash toned down the gold and orange tones). I'm going to have to get a haircut soon, I think; the ends of my hair have got to be somewhat frazzled by now with all this mucking around with bleach and other colorings and such!).

Anyway, this little self-portrait wasn't taken outdoors but it was using a pretty effective flash. It's more red now, less orange. I think I'll leave it alone for a few weeks now, until the roots start to grow out and I have to do something about it. The goal was to go lighter red and that's what I've done, and I've got the added interest of a few red-gold chunks and a fair bit of streaking, so, hey, if I wanted a change (and I did), I've certainly accomplished that!

Liquid Sculpture is the process of creating shapes by dropping and splashing water, or other liquids. These sculptures are then photographed, since they last only a few thousandths of a second. Creating and capturing these engaging forms requires careful manipulation of the materials and precise control of the lighting and timing.

I've been going through a process to lighten my hair, which was, as I've mentioned, a very deep red for a long time.

A couple days ago I took the next step, which was fixing a few areas that didn't get sufficiently streaked when I did it the first time and then following that with an all-over coppery-blonde shade.

When I was done, Miranda asked, "Did you wash your hair?" and I told her I did, and then said, "And what color is it?"

She looked at it thoughtfully for a bit and then said, "Orange?"

Today I took a couple pictures of myself in the sunlight, just so I could get a good look at the hair color and... I think Miranda may be right....

I got myself a set of proper earphones (no nasty buzz!) with an attached microphone so that I can do the web chat thing. Kewl, eh?

Oh, how I wish we'd had these sets when I was a support tech! I used to get the worst crik in the neck from wedging the phone between my jaw and shoulder!

And, best of all, I can sing along with The Bangles (or whatever; I happen to be listening to The Bangles just at the moment) and still be on key because I can hear myself! Anyone who has ever lived with me can testify that while I can sing quite well, I can't sing well while wearing headphones....

A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she! tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

YOU ARE BASIL


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I can't think of basil without thinking of Basil the Rat from Fawlty Towers...

Baby tortoise with two heads

Mmmmm. Tea. Earl Grey, made fresh with proper tea leaves in an infuser (rather than teabags). Mmmmmmm.

I've updated my desktop wallpapers and reorganized them a bit. They now have their own gallery section for ease of viewing and downloading. Visit the Picture Gallery to have a look.

For the past three days, my cable connection has been flaking out on me. I've had outages of up to two hours at a time, long periods of severe packet loss and S-L-O-W performance that made stuff nearly impossible, time-outs, you name it. It's been driving me crazier than I already am, I tell you...

Today, it seems to be okay (knock wood!), but I dunno... If it keeps up, I'm going to call them and let my inner New Yorker have a word with them (trust me, she's scary, they'll get the picture that I'm annoyed).

Anyway. I'm hoping it's fixed now. I HATE calling tech support, because they're mostly idiots and they treat me like I'm an idiot, too.

Well, I did finally find a really good deal on a wide-angle lens for my new camera. Apparently, it also does macro, which will be fun, particularly if I use my macro magnifying lenses with it, heh. I had to order a step down adapter ring for it, since the front threads are bigger than the filters that fit on the camera without the lens (i.e., normally it uses a 55mm filter, but the wide-angle is 55mm and 58mm at the front; the adapter ring is 55mm on one end and 55mm on the other, so I can put the same filters on).

I'm still learning new techniques with it, figuring out about the zoom (too much zoom, I find, tends to create that icky phenomenon known as "purple fringe", although only in certain situations), about how to use the macro filters, etc.

Anyway, we're going on a trip away for a couple of days later in the month and I expect to be taking a lot of pictures, including landscapes, which might be a situation where a wide-angle lens will come in very, very handy.

Now, I think I might go and format the macro shot I took the other day. I was quite pleased with it...

Swearsaurus is the world's largest resource of multilingual swearing. It will teach you a vast array of swearing, profanity, obscenity, blasphemy, cursing, cussing, and insulting in a massive 169 languages - because it's good to experience cultural diversity!

I've been a redhead for a very long time. I'm certain that nature intended me to be one, and just couldn't quite get the genetics right for the actual hair color. I've certainly got the fair skin and firey temprament (which is only a myth, because I've known plenty of timid redheads and smart blondes and dumb brunettes, etc., but I digress, as usual).

Many years ago, before I figured out I was meant to be a redhead, I used to color my hair blonde, actually. Didn't look good on me, as I'm so fair skinned (and I won't even make a joke about being too smart to be a good blonde, heheh).

So anyway, I've been a redhead since 1982 or thereabouts, varying the shade of red, sometimes having kind of strawberry blonde and sometimes really, REALLY red (that was actually a mistake, but it was cool, for the few weeks I had it; I looked very geek punk because of the haircut I had at the time). For the past six years or so, I've been coloring it a very dark red, just because that's what I felt like doing with it.

Lately, I've wanted it to be lighter again, just because that's what I feel like doing with it. I bought a box of a sort of medium light golden brown shade that I thought was suitable and colored the whole thing with that, but only the roots were noticibly lighter. So I got professional advice.

I was advised that the only way to go lighter would be to bleach it, which I already knew (after all, I'd been a blonde for several years), but that doing an "all over" bleach is difficult to get right and fairly bad for your hair (which I also knew, as I used to overprocess my hair shamelessly and managed to turn it into straw for a while when I was bleaching it). I was told that doing it in stages would be the best option, and that I should start with streaking it.

So I did. I got the silly plastic hat with holes all in it and got Andrew to pluck dozens of little pieces of hair through the holes (sometimes at considerable pain to me, oww!). Took ages, was very boring, and when it was finally done I looked silly as hell with a plastic hat and bits of hair sticking out all over, but then we did the bleaching and I sat around looking even MORE stupid for a while (with the bleach on the bits of hair that were sticking out all around my plastic hat), but the end result is very pleasing.

I had thought to do the streaking and then do an all-over coloring to further enhance it, but you know what? I really kinda like it the way it is now. I think I'll leave it for a few weeks, partly to avoid overprocessing my hair and partly, I just think it looks cool.

I also think it makes me look younger, which is a good thing. I'm not especially vain (I'm hardly vain at all, actually), but it's never a bad thing to look younger. Unless you're trying to look older (you know, like a teenager who's trying to pass for legal drinking age or something).

One thing that the bleaching process reminded me of was the smell of the bleach. Wow, haven't smelled that in years, but it brought back a lot of memories of... well... bleaching my hair (what else is the smell of hair bleach supposed to remind you of?).

Anyway, here are some pictures I took with the webcam. They're not great, but you can get the idea, and if you've seen previous webcam shots in the column just to the right, you know that my hair is much lighter now than it was just, well, a few hours ago.

And yes, that's a striped flannel pyjama top I'm wearing. Just in case you wondered. Oh, and you can also see clearly the very seventies haircut I have at the moment, the one I had when I was about fourteen (and which I wrote about in this blog a while back).