Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Fruity 

Mum went looking for a blanket for Ripper at the local second-hand shop. Instead she came home with this yellow teapot. The roses in the photograph are not from her garden. Mum thought she might prune the rose bushes across the road for the absent homeowners. The green plastic spout whistles.

Yellow teapot with green leaf handle, roses in vase behind
// posted by Deanne @ 21:56
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Friday, May 13, 2005

Extensible and Almost Finished 

Part of me likes order and I think that part of me sometimes takes over when I should be concentrating on more creative pursuits. Or maybe when I should be exercising. The orderly part of my brain recently decided to change my entire Web site from HTML 4 to XHTML. I'm almost finished and the job is easier thanks to NoteTab and my already uncluttered HTML code.

NoteTab doesn't automatically add list item end tags but it does fix up line break tags, horizontal rule tags, image tags, meta tags and link tags. Very handy. Nested lists almost caused a problem until I realised I'd simply added a closing list item tag to the end of every line that began with a list item tag - instead of at the end of every list item (some list items contained another list or two).

Reading the discussion of 'Fix your site with the right DOCTYPE!' at A List Apart, I discovered why the DOCTYPE NoteTab inserts doesn't validate. The word HTML needs to be in lower case.

'XHTML Explained' at HTML Source helped me learn how to make the change without breaking anything.

The W3C Validator is very busy with my pages right now. Should all be worth it soon. At least, the orderly part of my brain thinks so. The creative and practical parts are shaking my head.
// posted by Deanne @ 15:37
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Wyverns and Wine 

Even at book group I find myself pre-occupied with food. We met today at Hamelin Bay Wines outside of Karridale. I came home with a dry white blend of chardonnay semillon sauvignon - screw-capped and 10% off at the cellar door. We discussed olive picking, the Bannister Downs Cheese Company in Northcliffe, and the book.

The book was The Last Resort by Alison Lurie and I've just remembered a paragraph that I wanted to note down, d'oh. This month's novel is Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates.

We also wondered at the difference between wyverns and dragons after spotting the wyvern on Hamelin Bay Wines' logo. Based on my knowledge of dragons from Shrek and a large representation of a wyvern on the wall, I guessed that the difference is in the number of legs. Dragons have four legs and wyverns have two.

Just so I know for later, a female griffin has the wings of an eagle while a male has spikes where wings might be. Ripped off.
// posted by Deanne @ 19:50
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Monday, May 09, 2005

Let's Go Shopping 

Megan, Rori and I travelled to Perth last week for a break, staying at Kings Perth Hotel on Hay St. Lucky for us, Rori liked the city and watching people walk by her pram.

We bought dinner from Hans Cafe on Monday night and from Oleh Oleh Cafe on Tuesday night, both on Hay St near Mesopotamia Kebabs. Megan spotted a friend from her days working in a Leederville cafe behind the counter of the kebab shop and stopped for a chat.

On Tuesday we caught the train to Cottesloe so I could find a birthday present for Caelan at Singing Tree bookshop. From there we went on to Fremantle for lunch at the health food cafe across from the town hall. I ate a fresh and yummy curry and rice pattie with tomato salsa. The purple lights in the town hall toilets wowed Megan - somehow she's never encountered them before. We called in to see Gill in the early evening and Megan saw Gill for the first time in over six years - therefore meeting my Godson Caelan for the first time.

Before driving home we stopped at Harbour Town Perth to shop at the seconds outlets. Too confusing for me - I bought sheets from the Sheridan outlet rather than flick through racks of clothes. Manchester's so much easier to try on. Many of the shoppers pushed prams and yet so many of the shops prevented prams from entering by cramming clothes racks or piles of shoe boxes just inside their doors.

Called in to the Roadhouse @ The Centre of the Universe for a fresh tuna and salad sandwich on the way home too. Of course, the centre of the Universe is wherever I am but the roadhouse is always at Lake Clifton.

More and more my trips away are about food and not the sights. And so many smells.
// posted by Deanne @ 16:19
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Friday, May 06, 2005

The Buzz 

I've added two more links to my writing page. Writing.Com is an online community for readers and writers providing free portfolio space in addition to message boards, e-zines and interactive stories. Food Writing offers a bi-weekly newsletter and six-week courses in writing about food.

Freelance Writing Organization Int'l is also updating its database software and requires donations to continue offering their huge writers resource for free. I'm not financial enough to send any Aussie dollars their way so I'm quietly promoting their site instead. The latest FWO newsletter came with a quote I quite liked too -


According to aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly.
Its body weight is not the right proportion to its
wingspan. Ignoring these laws, the bumblebee flies
anyway." -- M. Sainte-Lague


Probably time I buzzed off.
// posted by Deanne @ 13:39
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Sunday, May 01, 2005

Talking To A Browser 

I talked to my Norwegian browser with an American accent this week. Opera recently released Opera 8 and luckily I had a microphone at the ready. Opera didn't understand my request to see the list of voice commands until I stopped pronouncing commands like commahnds. I've listened to my own Web page in Opera and can now log in to Blogger without touching the mouse. Very spinny. I'm not sure how to have Opera read without using voice commands - I'm sure a key combination or mouse gesture would be as easy as using voice for a lot of people. Very spinny.
// posted by Deanne @ 21:10
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