Interesting Links for 21-12-2011

• A petition to support a constitutional amendment to stop corporations contributing to political campaigns
  (tags: democracy usa money politics )
• The best sparkling wine is supplied by...Sainsburies.
  (tags: champagne alcohol wine )
• Is a cure for the common cold on the way?
  (tags: virus medicine )
• Awesome photos of dogs diving for balls
  (tags: dogs photography water )
• Canadian university's AIDS vaccine wins approval | Canada | News | Toronto Sun
  (tags: aids canada research vaccination )

Livejournal, and profiles, and things being fucked up, oh my!

So, LJ's upgrade of the comments system fucked up my journal's comments, meaning they were no longer threaded.

I figured that this was possibly because I was using a custom style that I'd hacked together myself. So I switched to a different one (in a particularly vile combination of colours) and that seems to have sorted the threading out.

Now I just need to make it look less awful and I'll be happy!

Normally, at this point, I'd offer people invitations to Dreamwidth

But I don't need to, as they've temporarily removed the invite system.

So if you want to switch over (or add it as an extra) then you can.

(I didn't do this during the DDOS, because frankly that's not LJ's fault. But if they're going to go around fucking up the UI, then that's their lookout.)

What I did today

In work at 8am to prepare for a 9am meeting, which went quite well, and produced some ideas for a project I'm working on.

Left early as I had a dentist appointment just after midday for a slightly chipped tooth*. It lasted ten minutes as the dentist just patched it. Then I went home, kept Julie company while she packed, prepared a few things for the holidays, made a phone call to the Edinburgh Registrry Office to talk about weddings, and made a phone call to my insurers which saved use £210.

And then we hopped onto a bus into town, switched to an airport bus, and then had dinner together at the airport as we arrived with an hour to spare before Julie had to head through security.

Then I got the bus back into town, nearly falling asleep on the way, switched to the bus home, popped into lizzie_and_ari's flat, and picked up the keyboard that I had lent to marrog aaaages ago***.

And then home, where I've fallen over for an hour, but must now go and pack for my own Christmas flights, as well as throwing out the rubbish and making sure there's nothing lurking in the fridge to evolve over the week we're gone.

And then bed, where I will no doubt sleep exceptionally well.

*Probably due to stress-induced teeth-grinding. I am _so_ glad it's almost Christmas.
**They were trying to charge us £485 for home insurance. I phoned a competitor, got a quote for £250, phoned them up and said I was quite happy to shop around, and got a quote from them for £270. I'm perfectly happy for pay the extra £20 for continuity of service, in case anything goes wrong again with the damp. Motto: make the call, you never know what it might save you.
***What with marrog and erindubitably having left for Dundee I suddenly found myself with a keyboard, and my copies of Ticket To Ride and Robo Rally back. We need more shelves.

Fun with magnets

and

both via this discussion, which has many other interesting things in it.

A slight frustration with technology - Christmas Present edition

Julie* got me a Kobo Touch for Christmas. It is made of awesome. I love that it's smaller than the old ereader I had**, and Julie's Kindle (and slightly smaller than the Kindle touch), and is now nearly all screen. I also love that the screen change is dramatically faster than on my old reader**, as well as lighter. And the screen-turn isn't a button, it's a swipe on the screen. Plus you have lots of control over font, font size, line-spacing, etc. It's pretty much as good as book-readers get until the Kyobo or its successors hit the UK.

There is, however, one problem. Julie took the only micro-USB cable in the flat with her when she went home for Christmas***. Which leaves me with a bunch of epubs on the PC, a device with WiFi sitting a foot away from it, and no method of getting files from A to B.

*sigh*

*and her family, lovely people that they are.
**A Sony PRS-505. Its battery died a few months ago. I've been looking forward to its replacement a _lot_
***No, I don't know where they've all gone either. There should be at least three in the flat somewhere.