So, Eurovision this year was, erm, okay. Here are my highlights

Firstly, Sweden. A few songs in. Incredible, weird, scary Popera. That’s right, pop and opera, just like in the film the Fifth Element. Unfortunately, she wasn’t blue. She was, however, a very scary lady. With bug, scary hair and a big, scary smile. Video Link coming soon.

Then, back a song, a French woman. Singing in a husky French voice. Otherwise crap. Video Link coming soon.

Next, on to Croatia. Where we get to meet the love child of Daniel Radcliff and Zac Effron. He loved himself to much, far too much. Video Link coming soon.

Kirtsy Allsop was up next, for Portugal, with a happy song about something undeniably happy. She’d get my vote – If I’d voted. Love Allsop. Video Link coming soon.

Next Greece had a Bredan Frasier/John Barroman/Enrique Iglesias cross. Very energetic. Very camp. Looks like he’s playing a dancing game. Video Link coming soon.

Armenia – Lesbian Vampires. Video Link coming soon. Video Link coming soon.

Russia gave us a weird song. Not for the song, which was actually a little boring, but for the huge screens behind the singer showing her aging and then, at the end of the song, crying. Like I said very weird. Video Link coming soon.

The backing dancers of Moldova were filled with Joy. The singer was terrible. But they were amazing. Video Link coming soon.

Denmark gave us a camp Ronan Keating, singing a Westlife song. Video Link coming soon.

Shiny trousers, sexy dancers and Dita Von Teese. Germany were trying to hard. Video Link coming soon.

Albania gave us some serious oddness. There was a pixie, two mimes and a blue alien. The blue alien didn’t sing opera. Video Link coming soon.

Norway gave us a cheerful Zac Effron. With a violin, singing a happy, joyful song, and not making him want to punch the TV at all. Video Link coming soon.

Madness? Ukraine has Gay Spartans. That’s right, and they’re definitely gay. Just imagine it. “No, Girlfriend, this is Sparta.” Video Link coming soon.

Finland had Eminem with Celine Dion, and a couple of other women. Weird and crap. Video Link coming soon.

And we, weren't that bad. We even got a big cheer and a little bit of a standing ovation. Video Link coming soon.

So, who won?

Norway. They weren’t that good. Bah.

And where did we come?

Fifth! We came bloomin’ Fifth! That’s like winning for us.

Next year though, we’ll do better. Let’s get Bill Bailey to do something. We won’t win. But it’ll be funny.

I will learn how to do this. Even if it takes all week.

The Daily Mail yesterday quoted Girls Aloud member Cheryl Cole as saying:

'I remember being in Selfridges and taking these size 28s into the changing room and not being able to get them on, and then getting on the scales and crying because I was nine and a half stone. Nine and a half stone when I'm only 5ft 3in.'

She says more, though not much, which you can read here. Now talking about sizes, Cheryl puts her weight at nine and a half stone. A quick go on an online BMI Checker, and we discover that a 133 pound, 5' 3'' person has a BMI of 23.6 , which is neatly in the middle of the healthy BMI of 18.5 to 24.9.

I suppose it's not really fair to call her anorexic, from the weight she quoted above she would have had to lost a couple of stones to be considered underweight. However, if you think about just how many young girls look up to the girl band Girls Aloud, you can see how she should set an example and be happy with her size when she's a good, healthy, normal weight.

And besides, they look too thin to me.

"How Women will be More Equal than Men"

Thanks to the Daily Mail.

I have only two things on my laptop at the moment that cost me anything, beside the initial cost of the laptop; those two things are Norton 360 (which my girlfriend insisted on) and Microsoft Office Ultimate which I managed to get for £33.87 (£38.95 with tax though).

However on my last laptop and ,in the main, on this laptop I have a lot of free software. A year of experimenting with online freebies has allowed me to decided on the best free software that I know of. Here is my list of recommendations to you.

1. Firefox (with Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer, Googlepedia, McAfee SiteAdvisor, PicLens, Stumble Upon & Tiny Menu add-ons) ~ The best web browser in my opinion. Other options are Internet Explorer, of course, though upgrade to 7 if you haven't already and get the IE7 Pro add-on; Opera is another option, and of course there is Songbird which is listed below and is still in beta.
2. Windows Live (Mail, Writer, Messenger, PhotoGallery) ~ Pretty and useful applications from the windows live team, the four listed are the ones I use.
3. OpenOffice ~ A full spec office suite. Good if you don't have Microsoft Office.
4. RocketDock ~ Gives a Mac style dock to your PC.

Also look at:

Last.fm (radio); Google Earth; Songbird; Spybot; CCCP

Bye for now, L.B.

I just found this, and it amused me. So I thought I'd post it. Click the image to buy it and/or visit the site. 

A couple in a Diner in Iowa received a blank cheque  from an elderly stranger on the 8th of February this year. He gave the couple the cheque after they told him that they had a 2 year old child with the condition that money must be spent on a house.

The couple wrote $100,000 (about £50,000) on the check to which they benefactor replied "I'm good for it." The only other conditions he set were that they were not to reveal their last names or his identity and that they were to name the next child after him. They plan to honour their agreement.

LB

Sources: ABC Orange

Do you know what I like about wireless? Sometimes, when you need to, you can take your laptop to the toilet with you and keep reading BBC news.

When will Windows Live Groups happen, I wonder? We've already all learnt to use Live Mail, Live Messenger and Live Spaces (right now I'm writing in Live Writer, which, judging from the lack of speed of which it loads, is really meant for Windows Vista) but as of yet I've heard very little of a revamp of MSN Groups.

The only real source there seems to be on the subject of Live Groups at the moment is Wikipedia; On a stub page entitled 'Windows Live Groups' which includes, as it's only reference, a link to an online article written by a lady named Mary Jo Foley. She writes (near the end of the piece):

"According to a Wikipedia entry (which Fluegel said his team did not create), Live Groups will allow Windows Live Spaces users to slice and dice their contacts into different sharing/collaboration groups." - Link

Interesting that her article references something, for which it is itself is a reference. Well, you can see clearly that this article has little validity even if it is the strongest reference I can find. However, there is some other evidence to suggest that an update to MSN Groups is in the pipeline. There are various discussions online about cached web pages that have been found through Windows Live Search showing the future Live Group home page (though I cannot find one site where a link to such a page works) and it is also true that MSN Groups are still around: why keep it if Microsoft are planning to scrap it - you'd think they'd just do it already. Of course, if they are planning on keeping Groups, they are bound to update it to their new Vista/Live theme.

Furthermore, it would seem logical for me that Microsoft are going to add Groups to Live Spaces, as they've done with SkyDrive and Events. Considering the fact that the appearance of MSN Spaces, when they first came out around early 2005 - I think, crippled groups (especially mine it seemed: Badger's Friends) Groups really can't survive on their own.

Comparatively recently, even, I have created a new MSN group in the hope of attracting some friends to join me in writing exercises and allow a place for practicing creative writing which enabled quick, honest feedback (sorry about the hype-spewing there) but that Group has managed to get nowhere because of several things, including the out of date look of the MSN platform on which it's running. I honestly feel that if Live Groups came about I could get my writing group Not Happening running.

As it stands now, there is little more I can do but wait: hopefully.

The Literate Badger

--------------------------------

Sources not link in the article:                               

http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!2920.entry

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=521825&SiteID=1

The book 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves',  by an amusing lady named Lynne Truss, is a book about punctuation: Though this seems like a dull premise for a book which is meant to be read from cover to cover, it turns out (in the hands of Miss Truss) to be rather entertaining and enlightening.

Truss is seemingly obsessed with punctuation - at least it seems this way from what I gather from her writing in this book - and this obsession serves the purpose of keeping the reader entertained during the book. If, like me, you have found yourself scowling internally at badly punctuated signs (to borrow an example from the book; a banner outside a petrol station reads: "Come inside, for CD's, Video's, DVD's, and Book's") you will enjoy reading about someone else's take on the problem - it's funny because it's true. If, however, you don't even notice these signs, you may enjoy the humour as more of a look at a crazy lady taking little things way to seriously. Moreover Truss is just a good writer who's skilled at her craft and this comes across strongly as you get swept along in a seeming tangent of humour and forgotten grammar.

The Book has seven chapters: an introduction; one on the apostrophe; one on the comma; one on colons and semicolons;one on the exclamation mark, the question mark, italics, the quotation mark, the dash, brackets, and the ellipse (a lot for one chapter); one on the hyphen; and a - sort of- conclusion. It all makes for a quick and strangely enjoyable two-hundred or so pages to read, and I can't say I didn't learn a thing or two from it either.

I shall certainly be keeping this book on hand when I'm working on my writing in the future, even though it may not a have an index - as a review named Kevin helpfully points out on the book's Amazon page - I can see myself reaching up for it more often than I should like to check that I really am putting that comma in the right place.

The Literate Badger

-- Buy This Book From Amazon: Click Below --

My Synopsis:

“Did anyone hear the interrobang?” Lynne Truss leads us on a journey through the world of punctuation, bad and good. An honest, enjoyable book, which is easy to read from beginning to the end and has a few things to teach the reader along the way.

After a 36 year 'gap year' Queen guitarist Brain May has handed in his PhD thesis for Astronomy. He will discus his 48,000 word thesis with the examining board at the Imperial College, London on the 23 of August.

May handed his thesis entitled 'Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud' to Professor Paul Nandra on the 3^rd of August. “If I fail I will fail big time.” said May in a BBC interview making a joke of the fact that his result will be very public. Here's to calling him Dr May in the future.

The Literate Badger.

Update: Dr May now has two honorary doctorates - and one in astronomy! He gained a category two pass which means he will have to do some amendments to his thesis, but he is now a doctor. He was quoted on the BBC website saying: "I feel comfortable about using the title because I worked for this."

He will be officially handed his PhD this spring at the Albert Hall.

L.B. (07/01/08 8:30)

Source: BBC BBC

A friend of my wrote this sentence - some large time ago now - late one night trying to completely his psychology A-level coursework before the final deadline, needless to say he had to rewrite it. This is exactly what he wrote, you can check, it is one sentence:

" Physical attractiveness of others and ones self is perceptual – each partner in each couple could perceive their partner to be significantly more or less attractive than most people would rate them, or more likely they could perceive themselves to be significantly more or less attractive, for a variety of different reasons, than most people would rate them which, according to the matching hypothesis, would make them seek a partner of their own perceived attractiveness, which in the case of them perceiving themselves to be less attractive than most would, or less than the person they are seeking does, the person they are seeking would not have to fear rejection like they would normally as they are not the seeker which could cause relationships where partners differ in attractiveness (which would have to be rated by enough people to get a general perception of their attractiveness) because the seeker will think the other person is of similar attractiveness and that person will think the seeker is more attractive which may enhance their reproductive success."

Thought this might be something  that someone, somewhere may enjoy, LB.

Recently I’ve been wasting a lot of time, mostly doing nothing, which is a shame really. I’d sort of promised my self that I’d do some serious writing once all my A level exams were over, but instead I’ve been scouring the Internet in search of cheap thrills. There are only three things I’m glad I’ve spent my time on; I’ve managed to complete and hand in a job application form for Choices - no meager feat for me I’ll tell you; I’ve read a fair old portion of a book I’m sort of into (Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist); and I’ve spent some very happy time with my lovely girlfriend.

However the rest of my time has been spent staying up too late watching late-night TV, sleeping in till twelve, playing too much ‘ZWOK’ and generally just being a lazy sod. So far, it’s been a rather uneventful break from education, but hey, here’s to hoping it just gets better and more importantly that I get some serious writing done.

Now for a note to you, my reader - whoever you may be - if you don’t like reading, stop now. This weblog will be filled to the brim with writing. Hardcore, continuous, multi-syllabic sort of writing (hopefully). If all goes to plan, there should be lots on pseudo-philosophical matters, political nonsense, some common sense-psychology, a rant or two about things that bug me and probably some semi-well researched answers to random questions that either pop into my head or that some numpty asked me. (Oh, and absolutely no use of the word ‘random.’)

Anyway, that’s almost all from me for now; if you’ve caught this message and now, are all looking forward to all these pseudo-psycho-rants please don’t be too unhappy if they don’t appear too soon. I’m still trying to get my mind all in order, so the first few entries I churn out may be a bit ‘un-exceptional.’ The usual “Let me introduce myself” post, maybe a piece of my older work - that sort of thing.

Until next we meet, The Literate Badger.