Valentine's Day Times Three

I'm not a fan of the kinds of valentine's day cards you get in shops.  I'd much rather find an image I like and then add some text I wrote myself.

So I went off and found a decent site to let me edit cards(Photobox) , put one together, and had it sent.  I'd tried a couple of different formats, and the only thing that had annoyed me was that text was lost when you switched between them, so I had to copy it to notepad and back.

Some of you are already clapping your hands to your forehead, as you foresee what happened - yup, that's right, I managed to copy the same text in twice, giving me Text Block A, Text Block A and Text Block C.  Not good.

So off I went to the internet, found the card, updated it with the correct text, and hit buy.  And then discovered that they were backed up, and not likely to send it until Friday.  Not something I was willing to count on

At which point an advert for MoonPig.Com came on TV, and it turned out that they promised next-day posting.

So off I went and ordered a _third_ copy of the card.

Which happily arrived on Thursday

And I breathed a sigh of relief.

(And another one when Julie liked it)

Oh - and she got me the best card ever - I don't think I could ask for a better cover than a graph of hearts and the tagline "Our love is positively correlated".  I'm a very happy man :->

EBooks suck

I have an ebook reader.  I love it to bits, and I'm 3/4 of the way through reading Anathem on it, which is much better than carrying around a massive hardback all the time.  So far my favourite feature is that it remembers what page I'm on, something I find very handy when I'm reading in three minute bursts.

I'd be perfectly happy to pay for more books on it, but some looking around makes it clear how unlikely that is.  I've just gone through the first 20 pages of what Waterstones have on ebooks for SF, and the first book I've found that I've actually paid for recently was Terry Pratchett's Nation.  So, let's say I had bought it in EBook format rather than as a hunk of dead tree.

Price on Waterstones for the hardback: £10.19 - that's with a 40% discount apparently
Price on Waterstones for the ebook: £15.63 - and that's with a 20% discount.
Prince on Amazon for the hardback: £8.49
Chances of me paying for an ebook this year: zero.

I have become obsessed

with this clip:

(from theweaselking)

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-14-2009

• How not to propose
  Some fantastic disaster stories
  (tags: food marriage valentines_day)
• 5 Geeky Marriage Proposals That Worked
  The ChronoTrigger one is just fantastic
  (tags: geek marriage cute)
• A Lottery for People Who Are Good at Math
  (tags: gambling statistics lottery freakonomics math)
• Record nails broken in car crash
  Impressive picture
  (tags: news world_record)
• Time-saving tech for Derby police
  Headcams. Which apparently have a fantastic effect on behaviour. I'm totally in favour.
  (tags: crime police surveillance)
• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
  (tags: security facebook privacy)
• Mindfuck Movies
  I really must get around to watching Rashomon
  (tags: movies cinema review mindfuck)
• Cotton candy makes sweet blood vessel copies
  Nom!
  (tags: medicine sugar candy)
• The Star Wars Valentine Card
  And hilarious it is too
  (tags: funny starwars valentines_day)
• Inglourious Basterds trailer
  Tarantino does Nazis!
  (tags: movies trailer Tarantino)
• Even anarchists like a little romance
  Class War gets into speed dating...
  (tags: dating romance valentines_day anarchy)

Nice things on Valentines Day

1) Julie.
2) Going into Le Marche Francais for dinner and seeing lizzie_and_ari already sitting there.  Which wasn't a complete shock, as they'd recommended the restaurant in the first place, but was still pretty amusing.
3) Kung-Fu Panda when we got home.  Which was absolutely gorgeous, and the dumpling duel was amazing.
4) Julie.

Happy Nearly Over Valentine's Day!

Just in time, and courtest of dapperscavenger I have these:






More here