LaraLoola

Cats without hats

The more other parents I come across the less I like us as a collective. I understand the urge to protect your young over anyone or anything else, but must it come complete with a total disregard for other human beings? Equally did I miss the special “how to park so no-one else can get out of their car” class? Or its follow up “fill up your car with moronic signs about who is ‘on board’ to perpetuate some idiotic myth that it makes others drive with more care whilst you don’t”? If I could avoid leaving the house during any school holiday I would. The children I can take, the adults less so.

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Ain’t that the age a girl gets really dirty

Tomorrow is World Autism Awareness Day*, and not a day too soon. Though I have no doubt it will bring out plenty of anti-vaccination loons folk, it does at least bring the promise of more accurate information about ASD. Despite recent fiction, and non fiction, accounts of ASD topping bestsellers still parents/carers/PAs of people with an ASD find it necessary to explain to the nosey idiots who assume bad behaviour. Obviously no amount of information and awareness is going to prevent the opinions of that oh-so-delightful variety of person who thinks disabled people should be neither seen nor heard, but it might help those who are just ignorant.*

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Just a quickie

Possibly NSFW depending on how paranoid your work firewalls are.
Isabella Rossellini is officially cool.

Is there anything new I can say to express my love for you? (very long post)

A couple of posts back I mentioned my “most favourite now dead people ever” lists, which mostly reside in my head. With that thought still lurking in my head I came across Time magazine’s people of the century, and the BBC’s somewhat dull 100 Greatest Britons list (though I quite liked the Brunel edition).

So I decided to come up with my list:

“The Almost (but not very) Comprehensive List of Some Very Fine People, Who May or May not be Alive (and some probably aren’t sure themselves)”

There’s 108 of them because I couldn’t knock eight people off. Not without feeling very mean. (Hence the title of the entry). So when I say this entry is long I am not kidding. Some are people you know, some won’t have even blipped your RADAR.  There’s only one who hasn’t got a weblink attached.

Some clarifications. Just because I like someone for something they have done, does not mean that I like everything about them. It does not mean I endorse their political or religious ideology, or lack of therein.  Regular readers can probably make reasonable guesses about what bits of individual personal ideologies I’m not struck on, but for the sake of clarity for lurkers I felt I should add this. So for example though I am a great admirer of Martha Gellhorn’s work and stubborn attitude I do not agree with her vehement distaste for all things (and people) Arabic. Etc.

One other thing to note I have skipped titles in an act of uniformity. Otherwise if I put Prof. X, I’ll have to put Mr Y and that looks a bit silly. Not to mention the minefield that is female titles.

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Irrational Numbers

Me in numbers
(sadly not in ‘Numb3rs’, although its probably for the best I’d spend a lot of time smirking and drooling)

Age: 30
Month of birth : 12
Amount of short sightedness: -4.00 & -2.75
Pairs of glasses owned: 5
Shoe size: 7
Pairs of shoes owned: 19
Increase of shoe quantity this week: 11%
Hip:Waist ratio: 0.75
Three Most watched television channels : 116 (BBC Four), 174 (Five USA), 102 (BBC Two)
Number of fiction books I own: c.321 (far too few)
Number of those books not in English: 2
Number of those not in English that I can actually read in entirity: 0
Number of texts I own that I have to read aloud in a Welsh accent:1
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1:4

Any of you who have twittered* or facebooked me may have noticed a link I posted earlier in the week to an article in The Metro. It doesn’t rank as one of my favoured news outlets (based on ownership and it being foisted in my face everytime I get off a bus in Nottingham), but this did interest me. Actually the credit for noticing said article should go to my mother who after having the paper flung at her took one look and apparently told the driver “C__* will want to know about this” (muster up a theatrical declaration and you’re practically there, my mother treats every opportunity to talk like a soliloquy*).

Anyway, huge diversion aside. The article interests me greatly. The Metro, and The Times discuss the action largely as though it came out of the blue (and nor can any of the articles agree on what amount Ms Laird is being sued for). Which I suppose is for brevity, and the fact that only residents of Cheltenham are likely to be especially interested in the prequel to this event. Though if you are Auntie has a couple of articles here and here. The preceeding events however, don’t entirely explain a worrying decision on the part of the council. The decision to sue someone for not disclosing a mental health problem.

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You Are What You Wear Part 3: It’s all about you…

So we’ve done, what I wear. Now it’s your turn. All two of you so far, but anyone can join in this one at anytime….

The two joinees so far are both male, which does seem to make a difference, in that there isn’t a great deal of difference. I don’t think this is because men are less interested in what they wear per se, just that the choice of men’s clothing is frankly limited. Especially in the West. Yes you can have a wardrobe of forty odd different t-shirt designs, ten completely dissimilar shirts and trousers in every fabric going. Basically though it’s the same three items of clothing. I imagine that a large part of this is down to socially acceptable, it being the case that even on avant garde catwalks the sight of men in a frock is still considered daring. And not just in the Daily Mail.
A while ago I was half watching something on television and someone commented that the human world is different to animals and birds, as in the animal kingdom it is the males that make the effort, whereas for humans it is opposite. It hasn’t always been the case, and certainly in some non-Western cultures male dress continues to be highly impressive. In Western Europe male extravagance in dress was common and regarded a symbol of status. Continue Reading…

You wouldn’t understand…

[non essential photo removed ]

Before I was a parent if there was one thing that annoyed me about other parents it was the phrase, “you wouldn’t understand you’re not a parent”. Or varients of. I’m now a parent, and still it makes my hackles (whatever they might be) rise. It’s one of those phrases almost certainly guaranteed to start a fight on an internet forum, and I imagine if the participants were drunk enough, it would do so in real life also.

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For want of a 1394

This spot should contain a video. The house blog warming, except you’ll notice that it doesn’t. If ever I meet any of the eejits who fill instruction books with phrases like “cross-platform”, or “use with any PC or laptop”, I will hurt them. And I mean really hurt them. Of the eight certainly working photographic devices* in the house, four have video capabilities. One films in a format no software will have anything to do with, one films in a format only Premiere Pro* will edit and has less than great sound, one will only film about a minute at a time, and the last one has both USB and firewire ports but nothing-not MovieMaker, not Premiere Pro, not After Effects, not Encore-will recognise the bloody thing with USB.

After discovering a forum filled with similarly grumpy Panasonic purchasers I’ve discovered it will only recognise it with firewire. Does my PC have firewire? No, of course it doesn’t. I wouldn’t be quite so whingy if it did. Fortunately the server does have firewire ports, less fortunately it’s a) a server, and b) in the loft-which is friking freezing. And I now have to find an ebay seller who is selling a cable with the right number of pins on both ends and not, as all the ones I found so far are, 1394 to a hundred other bloody things.

So in lieu, temporarily, of the video. Happy new year.

*The camera count consists of working absolutely-2 digital semi slrs, 1 dv, 1 120, 1 digital snapshot thingy, 1 35mm slr, my phone, his phone.
The don’t yet know-1 120, 1 127, 3 8mm.
The they don’t make film anymore-Polaroid Land Swinger, 1 110, 1 126.

*Which would be fine had I a computer that was as powerful as possible, and then I wouldn’t have sound and pictures running at different rates, and wouldn’t have to guess where to cut.

Grandma’s Camera

The camera

This, the Coronet Super-Flash, was my maternal grandmother’s camera. It’s from around about 1955, and comes from that most glamourous place, Birmingham. Through my childhood I can remember my grandmother with her Nikon SLR, which I was very envious of. The camera itself was probably the first thing that made me interested in photography, not what it did. This camera is the one that was used through my mother’s childhood, and probably explains why she seems to have an allergy to cameras that need anymore work than just pointing and pressing a button.

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