[penelope] Reduced risk of being mistaken for Lindsey Lohan and being crushed by a mob of crazed paparazzi?

I have a game in the Google Play store, and it's ad-supported so it's FREE!

Floored!

[Giertrud] Cool. I went over for a peek, but will leave it for others to download and play.
In other news... it's another warm and sunny day here in NL. If my Fashion Phenology project is to be relied upon as an indicator of seasonal drift and an early spring, then yesterday's spotting of a woman wearing a pair of white jeans, and today's observation of a student in teeshirt, shorts and sneakers on campus must be recorded. And here is as good a place as any. Have any other Crescenters seen spurious signs of spring?

As of yesterday afternoon, my lawns have stripes.

There's been a strange yellow ball in the sky a lot of the time in the past few days.

[Phil, Raak] This...means something.

Yellow balls cause stripes?

The pea & honey recipes have been splendid of late. Witty and clever. And they rhyme and scan too. Coo.

[Phil] Yesyesyes, but were UFOs involved?

[Stevie] No, I identified them all as alien spaceships.

(pen, penpenult.) It is spring. Must be - there was a frost here last night but now it's a nice 17°C.

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/03/13/the-predictive-results-for-typing-county-into-google/

[Giertrud]
1. Do you always believe what The Poke Says?
2. The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway
3. It's unscientific.
4. Get orf my laaand.
5. Google doesn't cover Wales.

I have stopped wearing bicycle goggles to keep the cold wind out of my eyes, and started wearing them to keep the insects out of my eyes.

(pen) re no. 5 - Thank God for that. (from the Ghetto)
(Giertrud) There y'are - we're the wittiest nation on earth.
(Raak) But does the cold night air know this?

[Pen] Somewhat topically, I had a strange impulse to apply those responses to Tony Benn's five questions to power:

What power have you got?
Do you always believe what The Poke Says?

"Where did you get it from?
The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway

In whose interests do you use it?
It's unscientific.

To whom are you accountable?
Get orf my laaand.

How do we get rid of you?
Google doesn't cover Wales.

I don't know about you but I think that works perfectly.

1. Do you always believe what The Poke Says?
no, I just thought it was silly.
2. The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway
It can be fun to see what comes up, especially when the name also applies to something else.
3. It's unscientific.
duh.
4. Get orf my laaand.
whyyyyyyy?
5. Google doesn't cover Wales.
Try telling that to Google The Powers That Be! (If you told me Bing didn't cover Wales, I'd be more likely to believe it.)

(Giertrude) Hmm, maybe they aren't such bastards after all. Should be Gŵgl, of course, but the title won't accept the HTML.

I still can't get those characters up there! Only copy-paste works.

Does no-one have any more banter? Tonight I have served a late curry to the very busy windy miller, made his sandwiches for tomorrow, watched a lot of lambs being born and slapped about on the telly, tried to catch up with the strategies of William and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and washed up. Tomorrow I will try to write some sense, then dine at the university before attending a marketing masterclass, hoping to learn something. And then it's Friday.

Should we now start calling you 'Wednesday's Child', penelope?

Being called a child of any description would be nice.Sadly it's not true. But talking of times gone past, I did make contact yesterday with two people that I hadn't spoken to for almost 20 years; both I met during formative experiences. One I worked with very early in my first newspaper job (which I didn't start unti I was 30, having had another kind of career before that) and one who organised a road trip to the Arctic Circle and beyond that made me realise that I can't bear very much heat on a summer holiday. That realisation has saved me weeks, if not months, of expensive uncomfortableness.

I went to a marketing masterclass last night, all about how to make social media go viral. Turns out that it's an art not a science, and that you can measure and analyse it all you like and be none the wiser, except knowing that you must 'light a lot of fires' and then 'use the right seeding nodes' to get anything that spreads. Oh, and before any of that, have a great product and hire GREAT creatives. </ marketing discussion>
In other news, I have just done a phone interview, bought birthday chocolates for my sister in VT, USA and am looking forward to Lincolnshire plum bread and Lincolnshire Red cheese [special imports] for Breakfast #2 at my desk. Happy Friday, crescenters.

I'm worried about you, pen, you're showing distinct signs of succumbing to marketing bollockspeak. And don't let anything go viral; let it stay bacterial and be amenable to antibiotics. Boo-boom.

Hear bl@@dy hear. I wish to G@d that "social media" had never crawled out from under the carpet.  My status message on Skype says 'I don't have a "mood message", a "wall", or any other so-called "social networking" nonsense -- I have a life !'.

[Neophyte] Got it, dear. But you don't boycott it? On the other hand, I live in a different country ( with a different language) to all of my family and the vast majority of my friends. I work in an international environment which relies on it. My view is the opposite of yours. Oh, and I also have a life.

[Pen] Yes, I boycott it completely. A binding vow of total lifelong abstinence from Twitter, Facebook, and all of their their ilk, and Linkedln only for professional contacts. I am also extremely intolerant, and shout "f*** Twitter" whenever someone on Radio 4 tells me how to contact the programme through that obscene medium. And a similar reaction whenever I read a newspaper article that cites anything containing commercial-at and hash prefixes.

Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his workroom so he would not be interrupted. Disliking a new medium of communication is not new.

My mobile is permanently switched off and nobody, except my next of kin, knows the number. Speak to the answerphone if it's important. When I'm out I'm not at rhe office. Like McCavity I'm just not there. The mobile is for me to ring the RAC if the car conks out.
As for Twatter and F*ckbook nobody expects me to be there so I'm not. Anything significant from it will in the papers/on the radio. I wouldn't say I would never use them but at the moment I simply can't see the point. Let others spout their banalities or make fools of themselves. (Just going to update my MCiOS status).

I never get calls on my mobile either. I use it if the car breaks down (which it never has, yet, touch wood), to find out who has the keys to the mill (and how far away from home they have driven before they remembered they forgot them) and to find out what time the windy miller will be home for dinner so I can time the rice. Occasionally I also use it for shouting at cold callers.

My mobile is largely an SMS-powered remote control for my daughter, and an alarm clock. It's paid for by work, but doesn't scroll up, due to dilapidation.

[Rosie] Outside the MCverse I've never adopted social networking in any substantial way, for reasons of privacy and compartmentalization; it always comes down to an insuperable dichotomy: nothing I could post to the whole world is worth posting, anything worth posting is something for which I'd trim the recipient list first. I've a number of chats of between three to six participants on the go in Skype, some of years standing, but their membership is kind of arrived at kind of organically -- or perhaps the word I want is empirically: each came to exist because it did and has lasted because it has.

(all) This site (and a couple of associated sites) is the nearest I want to get to social networking.

[Rosie] Honoured! Any Saharan sand-related weather details for us? I have the dust on my car in NL (but the countryside is dry and they're working on the fields non-stop at the mo*, so it could be North African dust or it could be Zuid Hollandsche dust)
*it smells of cow poo everywhere

(pen) The dust comes down with the rain but you only notice it if the rain is very light as it was here early Monday morning. There was so much dust on my car I actually had to wash it, an event of some rarity. Your car dust must be Saharan. It's been a bit breezy there recently and the atmosphere is highly convective, i.e. it's hot and rises rapidly and the upper winds have brought the dust over Europe. It's a fairly common event but the upper winds have to be right for us to experience it and some light rain helps bring it down.
Cow poo is the least offensive poo smell there is, at least to my nose - I rather like it but then I was an industrial chemist.

[Rosie] Oh I dunno. I find the rather sweet and cloying smell of human primary sludge as it enters the treatment works brings back good memories. For seven years after graduating, I worked as a laboratory technician analysing effluent of all kinds - from abattoirs, vegetable processing, and over one whole summer primary sludge during a BOC trial at what was then the UK's largest sewage treatment works just outside Norwich. My laboratory that summer was a caravan. My samples were mostly black and stinky.
This country usually smells of either poo or celery. Mostly.

I was noticeably hazy yesterday, and people have been mentioning itchy throats etc. I a totally unrelated development, I put new wiper blades on my car yesterday, and the difference in visibility is remarkable!
PS, the own brand sets from Halfords would have been £30 for all three. Ordered Bosch wipers from Euro Car Parts, with free 3 day delivery - £17 the lot. Hence, or otherwise, Halfords is a rip-off!