Spinebreaking Pottermore!

What a week! Not that I've been up to much, but I feel like this week has been manic. I think mentally I have been in turmoil, from worrying about my internet not working, to getting my 1st year grades (PASSED! WOO!), to finding out my boss (and really good friend) is leaving work next Friday (Is it wrong that I will miss my boss?!), to frantically trying to get early registration on the new Harry Potter website, Pottermore, to trying desperately to get involved in the website Spinebreakers (more on that below).

It's been one of those week where I feel like I have progressed... maybe not mentally, but in some way or another a progression has been made....

Yep - my internet stopped working this week, which was annoying for 3 reasons. The first reason was mostly due to the fact that I got the email from OU to say that my grade was available on the website for my first year... and I couldn't get onto the site to get it. I finally managed to get on the site after a few hours and saw the only word I needed to see - PASS - which made me quite happy, but made me realise I need to pay for my next year... which I don't want to do because I don't want to see that much money exit my account in one go! But... I know I have to... so I'll suck it up at some point and do it. I'm just putting off the inevitable!

Other things I have been internally stressing about for no reason what so ever is this new Harry Potter website Pottermore. I don't even know what it's all going to be about, but they were allowing 1 million people to submit themselves for early registration, so they can help with the development, point out bugs etc. and I just HAD to try to get in. It's not like I wouldn't have been able to join at the usual time in October, but... well, I didn't want to be left out. However the stupid website was putting up clues to be answered to win a space at the most stupid hours of the day. I.E when most people are at work, or asleep, so the only time I could actually try to get on the site was today, on the LAST day. And I managed it. I knew it was going to be between 12am and 3am that the clue would appear, and on Friday nights I don't go to sleep until about 3ish anyway, so I stayed on the site and got in there straight away! It's sad, how much I want this site to be good, and how excited I was when I signed up. But Harry Potter has been a huge part of my life - keeping me reading, and keeping me watching films and it's the thing that made me actually start my internet life - when I first signed up to Mugglenet and got on the forums, which led to working on forums making graphics for HP sites, and then being admin on a HP forum, and then watching certain people on Youtube who loved HP and made fan videos, and even setting up Blogger, because by that time there was no point not doing it because I was already living a seperate life via the internet anyway! So you see, I couldn't abandon HP now!

I've also been trying to join Spinebreakers, which is a website for Penguin books. It's a place where people review books and get the breaking news on new books coming out and it just seems like a great community. So I'm in the middle of trying to get into being a contributor and trying to get on the forums (which I can't get on at the moment for reasons unknown) - but as reading and writing are where I see my life heading more and more these days it's a place I really want to be involved in. Who knows - I'll try not to dwell on it until I hear from the admin folk, but it seems like such an exciting site I can't wait to get involved!

Well - I'm off to watch crap TV now, and for the rest of the day (Hello, The Audrina Show), and tomorrow I'm off into Manchester to watch Super8 at the IMAX (woohoo).

Have a good weekend folks!

Sam

BURGERS! NOM NOM!

I miss hamburgers the most!

I've been a veggie for about 3 years now... maybe 4. I don't know. I lose track of time because I don't pay enough attention to it, but burgers are probably the BEST food in the world, and yet I don't eat them!

Why? I always ask myself this. I miss burgers more than any food, well... apart from ham. How is ham SO good?

I do sometimes wonder why I don't eat meat, when I sometimes miss it. (But really I just miss burgers... I'm losing focus now...). But hey! That's my life! I stop eating things I like.

Example. In order to lose weight this year I have stopped eating white bread (amoung other things!). To you, maybe that's no biggie. But to me? Jesus *drags hands through hair to emphasise the point* White bread to me is literally my bread and butter. If I was hungry or just wanting to eat for the sake of it, white bread was there for me. To cradle some soft fillings, maybe with a sauce and some salad, or to toast and melt butter and marmite into... we had a deep connection. A strong relationship, but... like everything I love. I had to cut myself off from it.

I do notice patterns with my eating. If it's good, I actually have the stupidly steely determination to NOT eat it. And I do it for myself - in spite of myself. What a fool! I don't eat sweets, you know - because they are bad for your teeth. I only eat chocolate every once in a while, but NEVER chocolate bars. Only a truffle here, a piece there. To sate my desire.

One day I'm actually going to snap - gorge myself on burgers and ham, and chocolate and white bread and sweets. And then I'm going to keel over. Because if there's one thing I know, it's that when I open those gates, there's no closing of them. I will literally eat until I drop!

And this was the blog that was inspired by the picture of the burger.

Gods damn it - I'm starving now!

Sam

PS. I'm going to change my blog template again. I'm bored of it... I think....

Blah Blah Blah - turn the page!

I'm literally reading so much it's hard to keep up with myself at the moment.

I do this every so often. I read loads and loads and it's great! But then I decided to try to do a blog about each book I have read and I'm falling behind! Eeks! Oh well.

I don't really have much to blog about - I had a great idea for a blog the other day, but I absolutely forgot it by the time I got to my computer and I though if I just started typing I would probably remember what I was going to say. I haven't.

I'm just going to go and eat my quorn sausages and stop being so silly! Me? Remember what I was going to say? That will almost probably never happen!

Toodles!

Sam

Don't judge me!

Don't be a judgy budgie but.... I made out-of-the-box cookies yesterday!

Ah, I know. And I call myself a baker! (well... I don't really, but I do love to bake).

It's just, you know that Betty Crocker stuff is the bees knees and sometimes I just can't resist. I actually went through a phase of buying BC devils food cake, which is possibly the best chocolate cake mix ever invented. The cookies are equally good, but can not ever surpass the cake. Oh my lord. I'm salvating just thinking about it....

So I'm a baking cheat - what are you going to do?

Look, I baked this from scratch - never mind the fact all my utensils are clean... no... don't check the bin...

On a fun side note - not that there is anything MORE fun than baking - I have 6 books on the way. Yep. Yeppidee do dah, I bought 6 books at once. Because I ran out of my birthday books and now its time to read MORE. So I'll be reading, and posting little reviews up on my other blog when I can. Good times!

Sam



I know... I look youthful, don't I?



I think...

Therefore I am...

Such a philosophical Q and A. I know... What's gotten into me? I have no idea.

What I was meant to write, was 'I think I've figured out why this damn blogger stopped letting me edit my blogs to make them all happy and shiny and colourful and stuff'. But my hands got in the way!

So, yessh. I only just discovered, when setting up a new blog (I'll talk about that later), that I was on 'old' settings of blogger. Heaven forbid I be told they have changed the editor software. No! Don't tell me you have to manually change which ever one you want to use. *HUFF* Technology, eh?

So, on a lighter note. I set up another new blog. But.. no... wait... don't tell me I'm being silly - just listen! I read a lot of books and thought it would be fun to write about them. So I started this to have fun with. I know I don't usually keep up with new blogs, but hey ho! When you have an idea, you should go with it until you don't want to go with it anymore. And THAT'S why I've done it.

I'm bored now and my dinner is getting cold - toodles!

Sam

Transformers... and Bad Teachers.

All in one day!

I haven't blogged for a while, all due to the fact that my life is increasingly dull at the moment. However, I'm here to say I'm still alive! And I'm still trying to watch as many movies as I can (although not many at the cinema recently, sadly).

And I figured I'd tell you what I thought of Transformers 3 - Dark Side of the Moon, and Bad Teacher...

Well. I liked them. Both. Transformers was fun, and loud and all shooting and fighting (the only thing that upsets me about these films is the mess they make when they fight!), and although some of it (ok most of it) was daft, it was a huge step up from the awfulness of the 2nd film!

Bad teacher was funny and a lot ruder than I thought it would be, but again - I recommend. I find it hard to think of Cameron diaz as 'sexy' because to me, she aint, but she plays a messed up slut bag and it suits her just fine! haha.

Well. That was painless. I might blog more often!

Sam

When I was young...

I just heard someone say that we are the only generation who will remember what it was like to grow up without computers and the internet etc. Which made me think... that is so true!

I remember when I was younger we didn't have a computer! Not at home anyway. My dad had a couple in his office and over the summer holidays he would bring it home for us to play on. Mostly we played solitare, or mah jong, but we also played Lotus, the computer driving game (which to this day remains one of my favorite games ever!).

Our friends would come over and play on it too, because they didn't have a computer at home. By computer I obviously mean P.C, I didn't grow up in the 70's when Pong was a massive hit or anything! jeez, I'm not that old! :P

But yeah, I totally remember that a P.C was a novelty item. Our school had one in the year 6 classroom at primary school and we would get a turn to go on it during break, or some boring lesson... I recall always playing that ski-down-the-hill game but could never ever work out how to play it without getting eaten by the Yeti... to this day I can't figure out how you were supposed to do it. Unless that was the aim? In which case I did it very well!

I also remember when we first got the internet at home. We had AOL (I don't know why) and I set up my very first email address and told my friend that I had an email account and she also had one. Well, she, coming from a family who's father worked for something like IBM, already had email, but I remember feeling so cool for being able to tell her I had one too and we could email each other! I remember chatting to people on AOL chat and it was so much fun. I also recall that time when I told my friend I had email that I needed her address and in such a NooB way - when she told me what it was, I assumed that the @ in her email was written at @T - like the symbol alone wasn't enough - that the T had to be there because it sounded like it should be... haha. I'll always feel a little bit embarrased by that! But they were the days!

The internet all of a sudden exploded and you could Internet search anything you wanted! There was a website for the Sock Shop of all things and you could go on teenchat at school and waste an hour talking to random people for the hell of it, before you even had to worry about sicko's stalking younger children! I remember hearing people say 'internet cafe' and hope it was like a virtual world where you had a little person and you could walk around and talk to people (Hey! I invented Second life! No way!) but was dissapointed to learn it was just a term for a chatroom... no coffee involved. Boo! I also remember the first time I watched a music video on the internet! Jeniffer Lopez, If you had my Love! Yeah! Recognise! I was hip, even back then!

I wonder what other bright and shiny things will be invented in the future and we will look bck and say 'I remember when we didn't have those flying auto-mobeels, we walked around or got on those buses like regular folk, and we got by!' - whilst sitting on a porch in the outback, rocking on a chair and all of a sudden turning into some old woman from a ridiculous movie.

Ah, the future holds so many possibilities!

Picture overkill? haha!