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The Banter Page
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[FGZ*] I was, but I'm not now.
(FGZstar) - Yes, me, hence Duj's phone bill.
[FGZstar) I am, more or less indefinitely.
Who just made a new website with the help of Giertrud
Please, go take a look at www.everlastinglight.tk and let me know what you think!
[KS] I think it needs some extracts and perhaps some sample illustrations, and maybe you should say which age range each book is aimed at. And it also desperately needs a professional portrait picture of you, the author. At first glance (and that's all you get from any web-user visiting your pages for the first time - I think the patience limit is less than 7 seconds, isn't it?) there's not enough information there to make the books appealing and make me want to buy them.
Right now it won't load for me...
You need to lighten up the background, as the text is hard to read, and change the font to being bigger and more interesting, as the current font is a bit dull. May I suggest Verdana or maybe even Arial, although as it's for children's books, maybe Comic Sans would be more appropriate. Also rethink the logo as it doesn't really jump out at you. I'll try and have a go later and if it looks good I'll upload it onto the web and post it here for you.
[FGZStar] I'm in Leicester. At Phil's pub.
I knew that one. What happened to your web page, anyway? It's coming up account suspended
rooly trooly 2003
Sorry, bit late, but [nfras] Don't worry, Dunx and Dan are always getting mixed up Elsewhere. Some people doubt that there are more than about three people actually here at all.

Actually in the photo I linked to above that's Dujon on the left, me wallaby in the middle and PaulWay dressed in a rather fetching shade of blue in the background (sorry about the poor light, you might not have seen him properly). I have met many people in the Morniverse, but not Rosie (or Dan or Dunx).

Closing time
(Phil) - FGZstar is right. I can't get the website. Wotchoobinuptu?
Furry animals
(flerdle) - Erm, all I can see is two wallabies, one central and bright, the other to the left and dark. Am I being a bit slow or has there been a cockup?
The Morniversers I have actually met are Software and Chalky, and v. good company they are.
[Rosie] The one on the left is, I was assured, a bear, albeit with a pointy nose. PaulWay is rather tall and rectangular, with a slight metallic undercoat.
it's his car's Empeg player
The physical reality
(flerdle) Ah! I'd best say nothing. These, BTW are me, separated by a mere 60 years. Control yourself, woman. :-)
indeed
[Rosie] Awww. By the way, you might like to see the next photo too (no. 9). I only appear in ap12 :-)
High altitude bees
[Rosie] Good Lord. Why is your beehive so high off the ground? ;o)
(flerdle) Only No. 8 comes up. To get the rest I have to alter the address each time.
(pen) Surrey slugs are the most voracious creatures known to man and try to eat the thermometers.
everlasting light
[KS] Echoing what the others have said - though I don't have a problem with the logo. It's not really clear whether it's up and running yet - if this is just a mock-up then I think you need to say so. If not then it needs more than 2 books (that's all I found at any rate). The warning around the young adult books looks a bit nannyish without any books to link it to. However the main problem at the moment is the legibility - it's not easy to read and there isn't anything that jumps out to make you want to dig deeper. Best of luck with the venture.
Logo
Here is a basic mock-up for the Logo
[KS] I still can't get it to load. Not sure if it is a browser compatibility issue; I've tried both safari and firefox on a mac.
pics
[Rosie] That's right, it's just a photo not a html page with arrows and such. There is an index somewhere, but my website is pretty disorganised right now.
still looking for any website suggestions
The site is up and running, but I only have two books published at the moment, so the website is still a work in progress.
still looking for any website suggestions
The site is up and running, but I only have two books published at the moment, so the website is still a work in progress.
Who has just done some updates to the webpage
1) Pictures will have to wait until I can get them done. 2) Books waiting to be added. 3)Besides those two things, does it look better now?
re FGZstar
Can't see the picture. Told me I was not authorized to see it.
re FGZstar
Can't see the picture. Told me I was not authorized to see it.
Should Work Now
with appreciation to FGZstar
Thanks, but the logo at the top is based on the publishing logo on the back of the books. Take a look at the "peek inside" and go to the very last page: Amazon Link Here
[KS] Are you the author, proofreader, publisher, retailer and website designer? If so, to be honest, I don't think you're doing any of those 5 things very well. I just skimmed through the opening pages of Ace's Adventures and, apart from the black dog scenario being rather old hat (and unsound
Hidden textif everything was pure black, even in daylight, the dog would not show up against a black background
), the introduction page has at least two errors: comma instead of period at end of first paragraph; "answer" instead of "answered" in paragraph 3. I'd also prefer "different from" to "different than", but I'm English and picky.

Even with my love of sub-clauses and punctuation, "With this book, you, too, can be a mystery solver!" just seems too much - especially for a back cover that is supposed to grab people's attention.

Sorry to sound harsh, but my suggestion is that you should send your two books to professional publishers, with an open and optimistic mind. Take on board their comments, because they really do know what sells, and how to sell it.

Now that's what I call a speeding fine.
You can afford it.
(INJ) It would be interesting to what his income was, and the formula for calculating his fine.
A mere bagatelle
[Rosie] I read it as 300 x his daily income of £2166 based on a speed of 300kph (but I assume there would be some sort of graduated calculation before you got to 1 days income per kph)
not suspicious at all
I do like the speed camera's cunning disguise.
A fine country
In New Zealand they hide behind trees and around corners with unmarked vans.
Mustn't say 'And why not?'...Mustn't say 'And why not?'...Mustn't say 'And why not?'...Mustn't say 'And why not?'...
[INJ] I agree with your expressed sentiment. In New South Wales, where I live, the R.T.A. (Roads and Traffic Authority) erect huge signs by the roadside announcing that there is a fixed 'speed camera' ahead. People still get caught travelling above the designated speed limit. Really, how stupid can some people be?
There are constant 'Letters to the Editor' in newspapers declaiming speeding fines as 'revenue raisers' and that for some obscure reason the writer feels that a fine for exceeding a speed limit is some form of tax.
There is a simple answer isn't there?
Whoa!
(INJ) If the fine is proportional to the speed this would mean someone on £100 a day (fairly modest by Swiss standards) who exceeded a limit of (say) 120 kph by 10kph would get a fine of £13,000, which is absurd. Even if the fine is only proportional to the excess it's still £1000 for a fairly minor infringement.
The actual fine is so huge that either his income is much higher than £2166 a day or some other formula is used. Logically, it ought to be proportional to the square of the speed minus the square of the speed limit thus giving the excess braking distance. Doing this, one finds

fine = 0.004 x daily income x (V2 - V2lim) with V in kph

But applying this to the ordinary geezer on £100 a day doing 130 kph in a 120 kph limit gives, coincidentally, the same £1000 as before. Maybe it's proprtional to the cube of fourth power of the speed or possibly to income above a certain level. But then if you were poor you'd have no fine at all. I can't make sense of it It's all bollocks and obviously quite beyond the innumerates at the Grauniad, a paper I read BTW.
(Duj) Of course there is and they never catch me despite a tendency to leg it. But it depends on the fine. Speeding on a motorway (say 85 mph instead of 70) is hardly arson, rape and bloody murder, except maybe in Switzerland, a very well-ordered country.

Haven't I anything better to do? Well, just tonight, no, alas.

[Rosie] You may not know that you have to pay an annual tax in order to be allowed to drive on motorways in Switzerland at all, even if you are only passing through the country. Also, it's very hard to get in and out of Switzerland without using a stretch of motorway. Cunning, eh!
Swizz swizz
[Phil] Yeah - the payment covers January to December rather than a rolling 12-month period from the date of purchase, so if you buy it in October you've been done out of two-thirds of the benefits already, and the sticker they give you to show you've paid the highway robbery tax doesn't peel off either. Hmmph.
(Phil, pen) What a horrible little place, and in so many other ways as well.
Oh, I quite liked it...once I learnt to love efficiency.
Helvetia
[Phil] Your previous: Even Steve McQueen found out that, and he was only riding a motorcycle.
You have to hand it to the Swiss
Cunning, hiding the speed camera inside a perfectly innocuous six-foot tall, four foot wide block of Emmenthal.
[SM] Speeding cheese???
[Pen] The holes are crafted to give extra downforce.
Cheese
[penelope] You didn't follow the link ImNotJohn posted?
*grooooghyere*
[SM] I know the story, was just trying to paint a different picture. I think English cheeses are faster. At least one English cheese can travel at the speed of sound; Macheddar.
(pen) But only Brie-fly. Now look what you've started.
Maybe I'll sit and watch with a pint of Wensleyd-ale!
[penelope] Gouda you top that!?
I'm a sympathetic listener - camembert your soul to me.
Well, if one can't unburden on a rock like you, Rosie, what's a roquefort?
You can Comté me out.
Come, come, Softers. You could be a little friendleerdammer than that.
Oh Software's all right, providing you approach him caerphilly.
Yes but pen -- manchegoes on a bit.
Yes, but his views are similar to mine; Edamplify them, having grater loquaciousness.
I think we should all just chalk this one down to experience.
Hmmm, you lot are starting to get my goat.
Well, there's stiltons of cheese puns to get through!
Are you sure, because I'm at a complete g-lous-cester
Actually, I've decided I'm enjoying this little vignottes.
Cheese attributes
It needs a game. Biscuits for Cheese, anyone? And then when the cheeseboard is empty, other grocery items. *rubs hands gleefully at the thought of punnage*
That's a gouda Idea, but my cheeseboard is running out of content already
Wendy said pizza retard.
May I remind you that a rolling stone gathers no mozzarella.
Have we processed far enough on this one?
Microsoft would not tolerate further cheese-related punnery - but Applewood.
[Phil] MS were always a bit primula and proper like that.
[Rab] Absolutely, I rang them up to complain, but the lady I spoke to just made fun of me, the laughing cow!
I'll tried to give them a babybel on skype, but the computer gave me a BSoD (Blue Stilton of Death).
[rab] Sorry it took me so long to respond, but I was watching some Danish Blue!
[Phil] Whilst downing a yarg of ale as well, I'd wager.
[rab] Wise words, sir! Wiser than a Derby Sage.
[Phil] Well, a sage should know his Kraft.
I think this is starting to seem a bit cheesy!
[FGZStar] No whey! That same thought occurd to me as well.
who thinks she needs to find a clever Brit who wants to move to America to marry
When I was a little girl, my mom worked with ribbons and I'd wear them in my hair. Surprisingly, my friend would ask, what's the Beaufort.
Who is already married and has no particular wish to move to America
At the risk of getting onto a more serious plane I do remember going into a Delicatessen in Georgetown (a suburb of Washington DC, for non-US readers) and seeing a cheese labelled as Double Gloucester - the English version of Cheddar!
Next to it was one labelled as Low-fat Single Gloucester!
[INJ] That would be a cheese plane, then? They do exist, mainly to take molecule-thin slices of rubbery Dutch cheese of the right size to fit on a piece of bread. BTW, what's a cheese molecule properly called? I genuinely don't know. Cheesium?
(pen) There's every molecule under the sun in cheese (maybe not uranium hexafluoride) and some of them are quite big, like vegetable fats (50-55 carbons). On the other hand some are quite small and volatile like butyric acid, the smelly feet pong.
I want to know if at about 4pm, we can sit down and Havarti.
Thinks ImNotJohn is clever, but didn't say it was him who she wanted to marry
Oh, so we are on to chemistry puns, or cheese and chemistry puns? Cheesemestry?
Mercaptan's Log - Stardate 28810 :- Uhura is still banging them out, the dirty cow.
Ooh, spooky. I think you need to take a look on orange MC, Rosie.
cheeseshop
[INJ] I just saw a cheese here advertised as a "Goats' Milk Chevre".
(FGZs) Point me a little more specifically. I can't find any reference to farting there.
My location has nothing to do with farting.
Spot the difference...
Well, I wouldn't want to try getting around London with this. How many changes can you spot? (Comparison with the real one is cheating)
Easy, easy!
There are no stations, no lines, no key, no river.
Do I win?
Are you having trouble viewing the map? It's definitely there.
[FGZ] I like the idea of leaving it mostly correct with just a few subversive entries.
I suppose I did get a bit carried away, especially with the Jubilee line..
I can see it fine now - don't know what happened before.
Now working on another one, which includes all disused stations and proposed extensions (except fleet line). Any ideas about what to do with the white city area? It's a bit of a mess.
who knows nothing about the London Underground other than the funny black circle sign
Would need to be maps of Lake Charles for me. Then, I don't even know if I'd notice many things. I can get lost in my own city. I know I'm good. Why, thank you!
Tube Map
iirc somewhere in the ether there is a tube map where you have to drag and drop ALL the station names into their correct places. fictifino where...
Drunk Map
I think that I might try putting together a tube map with all the stations replaced with drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic). My thoughts so far is that the overground could be beer, and the circle line could be mixers, with possibly the jubilee as high proof alcohol. All of the connecting stations would be cocktails, and the others brand names. I think maybe the W&C would be just cocktails, and maybe the circle line as whisky.
Who wants to share more fun with people
I think many of you would love the site www.sporcle.com I love playing there and there are some people that complain about a few things being too U.S. Centric . . . so y'all could make a good balance most likely if you make quizzes!
*waves from Vilnius*
Yay! My Morphsuit has arrived!
[FGZstar] Pictures! Better yet, wear it to a pilg (see Orange game) and I'll try to resist the temptation to superglue the zipper shut.
BQULrfMYJfYgdDG
E93S6T hop hey la la ley http://avtozastivxux.sweb.wankah.cz
I'm not going to that URL, I might end up talking like him.
Don't Be Surly
And a jaunty "hop hey la la ley" to you to, Mr., Mrs. or Ms. XhLFMGIIvYvcLDqucg.
XhLFMGIIvYvcLDqucg
[SM] I did a quick Google search for the name 'XhLFMGIIvYvcLDqucg', and nothing came up. On the other hand, if you remove the 'cg' from the end, you have slightly better luck. This leads me to suspect that Mr, Mrs or Mz XhL FMG IvY vcDqu (whose homepage is here) may be operating under a (frankly, rather transparent) pseudonym.
Now Wash Your Hands Please
[SM] I followed your links and now I feel dirty.
translation
It does read a lot better if you feed it through Google translate.
Gibberish
Well, in most language options at least one recognizable word appears. I have noted sleep, even and Hugo after a few tries.
Ffolineb
Translating into Welsh provides only one phrase I recognised, viz Ysgol gynradd Gymraeg = Welsh primary school, and there is commendable gender agreement. That's what it's all about, then.
Who doesn't want to be a spammer . . .
None of that makes any sense to me . . . I'm just sad that no more people seem to be playing my Literary Rhyme Time quiz (or rating or nominating it . . . hint, hint). I took my time thinking of clever clues for that quiz! See? http://www.sporcle.com/games/kagomeshuko/literaryrhymetime Er, does HTML work . . . Quiz is here
Quiz site
I did look, and got about a third, (and saved a cached copy of the quiz) but I'm not really interested in registering. So I'm an invisible quiz-taker, and I suspect I'm not alone in this. The other thing is, as you said earlier, all the quizzes are mostly US-centric and yes, while it would be nice to make it more international, I feel rather too outnumbered by all the US guys to make any perceptible difference. Sorry.

Haven't got 'John's Stinky White Vegetables', because I can't think of a suitable literary surname, but I suspect you should be ashamed of yourself for that one.

Somewhere on my hard disk I've got a punny work-in-progress quiz a bit like this one of yours. Mine contains entries such as 'many-sized virtue' - 'paragon'. 'King's son publishes' - 'prints'. Some need more work, like that 'paragon' one. The clue doesn't fit the answer very closely.

[SM]
Hidden textBunyan
[K] I enjoyed the quiz, and got 15, which I thought was not too bad for the time limit
Hidden textwould have been 16 if I had been able to spell 'Malory' correctly; *hangs head in shame*
.
GQfQKSGtdcrLDjEcxtc
1EEjv2 hi all ?heey ? messus mangle
I think Simons Mith is the one to answer you there, sHEvKENZEyy. I believe he studied that very subject at university.
Have we all been shamed into silence?
[pen] Excellent! I don't have any good pics of myself to hand to try, but here's something appropriate.
who is thoroughly confused by pen's link
What's going on there?
[KS] I believe that is penelope herself in the picture (and a rather good picture it is too).
Another picture, that is, not another picture of penelope.
Posters
[aak] Thangyew. A friend of mine took it, insiting that it was homework for a portrait photography course she was doing. I was leaning inside her old garden shed holding two foil reflectors in outstretched arms. The wonders of photography, eh? But it'll do for my next book jacket, heheh!
Posters
Interesting in that Raak's is actually Raak.
[ISP] Well spotted! I am in fact a 28-year-old woman with a shaved head except for a tightly woven topknot and massively muscled shoulders and arms. Beware my biceps, for they can crack walnuts.
[Raak] I'd always thought you were in your 30s. Strange how things get confused :)
[Phil] It's a hard life as a Balkan mercenary.
This weekend, I am mostly...
catching up with a schoolfriend who is making the trip from Galway. I still find it staggering that I have had some friends for more than 30 years. Tomorrow, I have earmarked picking sloes and making sloe gin as one of our principal activities, and I notice that it's going to piss it down with rain. *rse. On Sunday (when it will also piss it down with rain), we will make an early start to the Vogelmaarkt in Antwerp so we can breakfast on pieces of fried fish known as kibbeling (yum) and waffles as big as our heads covered in chocolate and whipped cream, before watching the live kitchen gadget demonstrations, marvelling at the Moroccan spice stalls and buying trinkets and savouries according to our whim. (Is 'whim' like 'sheep' in that the plural is the same as the singular?)
Colloquial inconsistency
(pen) Shurely if you can say "piss" you can say "arse"? I know I can, and in style. I think the plural of "whim" is boring old "whims" and of "sheep", "sheeps". Just ask a Frenchman.
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