Today, my auntie and uncle from California and my littlest cousin came to visit. They’ve been visiting various places in Europe and are dropping by for a few days on the way back to America. Tomorrow, we go to legoland, hopefully with some kind of better discount than the web-preorder on, but sadly not quite as good as the one we could have gotten if we’d booked a few more days in advance.

This… is an interesting version of “Straight Out of Compton”.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 7, 2006, 3:37pm

Spent the last few days with my auntie, uncle and minicousin from California. On Friday we went to Legoland, which was cool and Lego-y. Yesterday was spent buying Wedgwood in Harrods and then zooming about on a bus tour of London. I suspect that the tour tape that we were listening to was trying to be funny, which only would work if the bus was full of probably British people who know various British-like in-jokes. So mostly, it was lost on a bus full of non-British tourists. And also, there were bits that were blatantly wrong as Tower Records got replaced by Virgin Megastore and why would you point it out on a bus tour anyway? Then there were bits that went “And on your left is the Tyburn Tree,” *cue everyone but me looking for some kind of a tree on the left* “which wasn’t actually a tree but a gallows and loads of people would be executed there and everyone would come and watch and it was better than Big Brother and very popular on bank holidays.” *cue people (again, except me) looking for a gibbet* “All that’s left of it is a tiny plaque marking the place where thousands of people died. In the middle of the traffic island.” *cue the rest of the passengers realising we went past it some time ago and stifled giggles from me*

A number of times my auntie turned round to ask me where something was and I had to point out that “oh, um. it’s not here anymore. they knocked it down. a few hundred years ago.” and stuff.

Randomly, the only time I seem to go sightseeing in London is when various family members arrive from other countries. Probably because I am the least baffled by the mysterious workings of public transport. Well. I can listen to announcements while applying them to the route we were intending to take at the same time.

Today, several hours were spent at the airport. Then some more hours were spent at Oriental City, where my mum had various chinese medical things done to her because she’s sick of the failure of western medicine to fix her high blood pressure satisfactorily.

During this… I mostly loitered and then had some teh tarik and bought a picture frame for my mum. And some delicious green kueh. I think the green kueh is the best kind.

Tomorrow… I will pack. Well. Try and stuff clothes into my suitcase around the box of tea for my auntie that takes up half of the suitcase. :/ I may resort to removing all the tea bags and shoving them in a more easily squashable bag. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be too much work. I have a tiny suitcase and a list of things other than clothes that I will be bringing.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 10, 2006, 1:29pm

On 11th September 2001, two things happened in New York. One, you’re unfortunately probably very familiar with and have been hearing about related things all day. The other was the announcement of an international day of peace, that would occur annually on 21st September.
The idea behind it was to try and work towards world peace, starting with one day of worldwide peace and ceasefire. Now, even one day of world peace doesn’t seem very likely to occur, but maybe if everyone works towards it a step at a time it could happen one day and then maybe after that continual world peace won’t seem so far away.

I found out about the whole peace day thing from a documentary I happened to catch on tv one night about this one guy’s attempt to get an international day of peace recognised by the UN and his subsequent realisation that just having a day of peace declared wasn’t enough and that people have to actually do something towards bringing about peace in any of its forms, even if it’s just on that day.

“ Documentaries sometimes document incredible things and I think our film did that because the creation of the Day came four days before 9/11. It was a beautiful moment and probably the greatest day of my life. Then to be outside the United Nations on the morning of 11 September and have the cameras running and for the planes to hit the buildings, words can’t really describe it. It was unbelievable. But as I say in the film I think it makes it all the more poignant. This is why we’ve got to come together. We’ve got to stand together as one. As Ahmad Fawzi from the UN says at the end of the film, we can’t sit around in our armchairs and expect peace to come, because it won’t.. “
– Jeremy Gilley, peace one day founder

Peace One Day website
Article from the times.
my lj entry on last year’s Peace Day

cross posted to peaceoneday

Originally from her divine shadow on September 11, 2006, 1:54pm

Almost finished the mood theme that i started… possibly two years ago and then wandered away from as someone in a community requested the one that I’d started. Got just over 100 mood icons so far and only really have the mildly tricky ones left. On the plus side, two years ago, I did managed to download the almost the entire picture content of a site on the subject of the mood theme I’m working on, so some of the more unusual poses are dealt with. Also, I figured out the command thingy in fireworks so some of the resizing and stuff is automated and the spreadsheet I made back when I started to quickly work out height and width ratios is still pretty useful.

Randomly, my neck and shoulders are sore and stiff. I think I’ve probably been sleeping in an awkward position, but because I’m asleep I don’t realise. Funny that. At least the pilates didn’t make it worse.

hmm. I should repaint my nails. and go to sleep.

sleep first perhaps.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 4, 2006, 5:32pm

Happy Birthday crantz

Originally from her divine shadow on September 5, 2006, 3:39am

Randomly got a call from a Nottingham number that hung up after ringing once. Other than people I know that I can’t remember if they live in Nottingham, the only other option is someone ringing to book a taxi.

Which has happened in the past.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 5, 2006, 10:35am

right-click, save as

Instructions

1. Download the zip file and unzip it.
2. Upload the files to your web space or a free image hosting service (e.g..
   Photobucket).
3. Go to the admin
   console.
4. Type in:

   moodtheme_create "Keanu Reeves " "Keanu Reeves mood
theme by herdivineshadow"

5. Click "execute". You’ll be given an i.d. number for your mood theme, make
   a note of it.
6. Open the "moodtheme.txt" file from the opened zip file and replace
   where it has "12345" with the number you were just given.

   moodtheme_setpic 12345 90 http://www.yoururlhere.com/accomplished.jpg
100 65

   (the bit bolded above)

7. Replace where it says "www.yoururlhere.com" with the url of your web space
   or photobucket album.
8. Copy everything from the text file and paste it into the admin console
   and click "execute". Your mood theme should now be installed.
9. Go to the Custom
   Mood Editor page and click on the "use" button next to your newly installed
   mood theme to begin using it.
10. Alternatively, you can also use the custom mood editor to install the mood
    theme, but it’s probably quicker to use the admin console.

NB: The Keanu Reeves mood theme has one mood icon with a shot of a bare bum.
If you don’t want Keanu’s naked buttocks appearing in your journal, replace
the "naughty" mood icon with another.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 6, 2006, 10:24am

MindMap

Originally from her divine shadow on August 30, 2006, 2:28pm

FRNK Radio – a stream of public lj voice posts. I know I posted it before and sethi found it strangely compelling, but it seems that lj has actually gone ahead with it, rather than just one of the lj geeks doing it for fun. 😀

Originally from her divine shadow on August 31, 2006, 3:22pm

Yesterday my dad and i visited the RAF museum in Hendon. It was cool and also free, which we weren’t expecting. We didn’t get to check out the Battle of Britain section, which was in a separate giant building, because it was getting late and my dad’s insides started making alarming noises (seriously, it appears to be a normal part of the craziness going on with his intestines, but you don’t expect to hear nureek, squeelookle and rutunga outside of Red Dwarf, let alone emanating from someone’s stomach).
Saw many many planes. Some of which were bigger than I expected. I mean, logically yeah, planes are generally huge and especially ones that carry bombs to completely own dams, power stations and the like. Usually though, they’re on tv or actually flying and therefore look tiny and you have no real perspective on how big something is.
Also, the plane are very dusty. Though it’s not like you can send someone up to ponce about on a wing with a feather duster I guess.
Today, I redyed my hair to try and deal with the bit at the front that was bleached and permanent dye washes out of. Can’t tell if it’s worked yet because there are no mirrors in my room.

What else? Hmm. There was something, but I can’t remember now.

Oh wait. Yeah. I have 4 Vox invites if anyone still doesn’t have an account and wants one.

I am starting to get excited about seeing AFI. In like.. 5 weeks. Heh.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 1, 2006, 11:41am