Snoskred - Life in the Country

I got tagged by Gigglewick - So this means you’re all tagged now - those of you reading this by RSS, get over here!

I’m not sticking to the meme rules of tagging six people because on Thailand Gal we’ve been having quite a few discussions about the politics of tagging and there is no way I could pick just six people out of all the people I read to do this meme. Plus, I don’t like rules.

So, what I’m going to do instead is say, I would love to hear from anyone reading this with their six things, and in a couple of days I will create a post linking to all the people who took it up. Hopefully there will be a few of you. I would especially love to hear from people from the Australian or US blog communities, and anyone in my sidebar links. Post a comment here to let me know you’ve done the meme so I can keep track and link to you.

And now, six weird things about me.

1. When I was a little kid, perhaps inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the elevator which could go anywhere, I had a dream one night. Basically there was a trapdoor in my bedroom floor which led to an elevator that could go anywhere in the world. There was also a bunch of rooms where you could put your hand on the door and say what would be inside the room. Typically, being only about 8 at the time, I believe I had a room full of little plastic balls that you could jump around in, a low gravity room where you could sort of fly.. things like that.

2. When I got to my teenage years, I had another dream where I could turn off shopping centre alarms and take whatever I wanted from the shops while nobody was there. Anything I picked up was magically replaced, because I didn’t want to steal things.

3. When I was old enough to date, I made a rule for myself that I’d never go out with a guy who had the same hair color as the last guy I was dating. So if I had been dating a blonde guy and another blonde guy asked me out, I couldn’t go. It actually worked fairly well for me.

4. I once went on a date with this guy from the armed forces. He was gorgeous, blonde, and physically very attractive. Unfortunately this meant he was quite the airhead. He took me to see Terminator 2 and during the movie he leaned over and whispered sweet nothings in my ear - the sweet nothings involved the make, model, how many bullets the gun would hold and the capacity to do damage to people of every gun in the movie. There were a lot of guns in that movie. I think I managed two dates before I realised I couldn’t date someone this interested in guns and little else, regardless of how cute he was.

5. If you’ve upset me, pissed me off, or made me angry at you during your time of knowing me, chances are you’ve ended up on my island prison. I don’t really like to punish people but sometimes it has to be done. In my head, you are sent to an absolutely gorgeous tropical island, you have a 2km square patch of sand, rainforest, and reefs, with a beautiful house mostly with glass windows. There are 50ft glass walls around the 2km patch of land. You get left there alone. In my mind that is the worst punishment for anyone - to have to be completely alone. Some people would think it was no punishment at all - but to be in this beautiful place and have nobody to share it with? That’s my version of hell.

6. I am a plane geek. I love planes. I like to watch them. I find them fascinating. To see a Boeing 747 lifting off it can bring tears to my eyes, it is just so beautiful. I know this means you’ll all disown me now. ;( but I can’t lie to you.

So, I hope to hear from many of you. Memes are a great way to get to know more about people, and this one is fairly easy which I enjoyed. Thanks Gigglewick!

Wow, it’s been a busy week here. Just a few bits of housekeeping and an art update.

As far as the commenting goes, I’ve decided to take my time with it because after going through just 25 blogs, I’ve added 5 excellent ones to my google reader. These are - :: adventures in daily living ::: - A Blogspate - A Day in the Life of….. - Life Under the Sun - A Green Earth (note this last one has some gorgeous art on it) - and these have now all been added to my sidebar as well. Link love for ya’all.

So you might be wondering what makes me add a blog to my google reader? 95% of the time it is because the blogger has “it” - it being a mysterious thing that makes me want to know more about them and read more about them.

What are some of the annoying trends in the blogging world that I have picked up after just 25 blogs? There seems to be a new plug in where you hover over a link and it pops up a preview box. This sounds nice in theory but it makes everything go very slow here on my system, and to be honest is just really annoying. If I want to click on a link, I’m going to click, I don’t need a preview. It also seemed to make those blogs very slow in loading, to the tune of anywhere between 2-5 minutes. I think it’s called snap or snapshots. Say no to it, bloggers. It seems to be evil.

In other blogging trends, you may have noticed a trend towards “monetize your blog”. I’ve been to some blogs with more ads than blog content. That’s not going to happen here, however.. I did get contacted and asked to put some links on my sidebar, which I was paid for. That money has gone toward an important new project which I can’t announce yet. Believe me I am hanging out to launch it, so as soon as I can say anything I’ll let you know.

Once that happened I looked around a bit and found out about Text Link Ads which you might want to check out. See sponsors over there in the sidebar? That’s my text link ads. It works on an RSS feed, and the text link ads people set a rate for your blog (which you can change if you’re not happy with it) - you can have full control over the ads if you like, and it isn’t going to buy you a BMW or anything but, it is a handy bit of spare change. Enough to buy me a couple of DVD’s a month and that’s only with two links there. It’s not obtrusive, it’s not annoying, it’s not something flashing on the sidebar, and MOST important it’s not paid per click - you get paid whether people click or not. We work hard on our blogs and if an advertiser wants to pay to have a link on them, why not say yes?

Wordpress blogs look fantastic. Sephy and I have been considering setting one up for some time now to try it out and play with it, so we did. On closer inspection it seems to be some kind of elaborate scam to get people to pay money for things blogger does for free. I could be wrong about that and Wordpress people don’t line up to hit me over the head with things, but it seems like everything costs money, even down to how much space you get for your blog unless you want to host a wordpress on your own space - which you also have to pay for. Blogger does this for free we’ve got it good blogger people. If you’re using Wordpress can you take a moment to comment on how it all works?

I’m seriously considering a blog template change. I’m not in love with what I have now however it is functional and it works. Elaina from A New Adventure - a blog I really loved the title bar design of - dropped by in yesterday’s comments with a few tips on how I can make the title bar bigger. If I can get a larger picture up there that might be enough to make me happy. I don’t like that the images have to be so thin.

While in keeping you up to date mode, I currently have many art works in progress. You can click on any of the photos for a bigger view. In this picture you can count 9 paintings in progress. You can see 5 stacked on top of each other - the pink one completes the set of 5 which I am doing as cardboard dragging. I’m going to take some pics of how that’s done so that I can write a post about it. You guys out there might be inspired to do some works of your own. It is so simple. Here’s a close up of the pink one, which I am seriously crazy about already and this is just the base coat. The painting below is the final completed version of the painting for my nephew, which had just been freshly sealed when I took the shot so the flash reflected a little. There’s nothing white on the painting. I asked you guys for opinions on this 69 days ago, wow, how time flies!So what am I up to for the rest of the day? I have to cook dinner, I am going to watch some West Wing, comment on a few blogs, and most important of all, look at some hotel packages in Sydney. This month is my Birthday month and Mum is going to pay for us to visit Sydney for a weekend (or midweek might be better value, because I am not my sister) and also IKEA. YAY! I’m seriously writing a huge list of things I want to get there. Laundry Baskets are number one on the list right now, followed closely by AA batteries. They had packs of 10 AA’s for $2 and they last for ages, and my cordless mouse chews up batteries and spits them out. Yes, I mouse too much.

I saw a hotel package which includes 30 minutes in a flotation tank. I’d love to try that. It’ll probably be somewhere in the CBD and I’ll take my camera and take heaps of pictures. We might get to the zoo but I’d like to hang out at Darling Harbor and go back to Sydney Aquarium myself - looking at fish without a snorkel. I don’t know if we’d have time for both. For those of you who have never been to Sydney, Darling Harbor is just incredible. There’s no describing it.