Alice in Wonderland Premiere

Eleanor Tomlinson, who is starring as one of the Chattaway Siters, (roles invented by TIm Burton for the film) was looking gorgeous at the London Premiere this week. Why does this concern me? Well, she is the sister of my Godson, Ross Tomlinson, (see this post) who is also an actor to be watched.

Eleanor, who was such a sweet child, has gone from strength to strength. She was in the Illusionist and Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging. Look out she has a great future ahead of her.

Day off

I’ve been so busy since Christmas, I’ve decided to do nothing today – and so far I’ve succeeded. I went to have a look at a really bad auction, just a load of old rubbish and now I’m going to slob out in front of the TV.

There comes a time when your brain needs a rest!

Show of Hands – Arrogance Ignorance and Greed

It doesn’t help much but this song and video help you feel a little better. I heard them on the radio this morning and they said they were into spreading themselves across the internet, so enjoy watching, guilt free.

Arrogance Ignorance and Greed are of course the initials of AIG , one of the financial houses that started the crash.

It made me wonder what ever happened to mutuality? Of course it got sold out in Halifax shares, but surely it’s still a good idea. The Banks have been brilliant nd brainwashing us into debt and mistrust of probity. And to think that Gordon Brown thought his second name was Prudence – Ha!

Obviously the Bankers can’t be trusted anymore, even when they’ve screwed up right and royally they refuse to change their ways. Create new, mutual banks and destroy the smug old syatem.

Snow – walking with my camera

Broadwell in the snow

Broadwell in the snow

Broadwell in the snow

Broadwell in the snow

Broadwell in the snow

Speech House Road in the snow

Baker’s Hill in the snow

Which way in the snow

Snowy rowan

snow covered sattellite dish

I woke up keen to know how much more snow we might have today and wether I’d be able to go for a walk this afternoon. We have such terrible TV reception round her that we get our TV on the satellite. There was no signal. It turned out the Dish was covered in snow and so giving us no reception.

My lovely daughter joined me on my walk up to the woods. It was so quiet – even on the road, just a few people driving around in their 4x4s because they could. Everyone must have taken the day off. There were a lot of people walking along the roads, but only a few dog walkers in the woods.

I thought I knew the paths well, but the snow covers all trace of the minor paths and makes every turn look different. We didn’t get lost, but did take a wrong turn once.

It’s Spring!

The storm clouds are gathering, the ground is frozen solid, My Daughter has left college early, fleeing the snow that is falling already in Hereford and that has started falling here. And through it all, the Japanese Rose, Kerria, outside my studio window has decided to flower!

Just one flower in a cold, frozen, barren garden. A little hope that spring can’t be that far away!

Website up and running!

Hooray! My website is up and running again. It is amazing how much a website becomes part of one’s Psyhche, almost an extension of oneself. When it is down, I feel a little part of me is not working. Sad, but this is what we have come to in the twenty first century.

YouTube Tags – Where did they come from?

YouTube is a fascinating way of not doing any work, especially if you are promoting videos rather than watching them. I find I’m getting a little obsessed with my statistics on ShooRaynerDrawing, where I give drawing lessons.

It’s happened in the past with other sites. Back in the late nineties, when MP3 was just getting going and the ipod hadn’t been dreamed of, I started putting audio, music and stories, onto the much missed MP3.com. It was actually possible to make money from uploads in those days! I think I made about $40 – which I immediately spent back on the site in promotion. It might have been a bit of a scam but it was fun – quite like a sim city kind of game really, building your little empire on the net.

Since then, XML and tagging have come into being and the choice of tags is quite important if you want people to find you in all the noise. So I’ve been fine tuning my tags and watching to see if they have any effect, and they do. Getting your tags right does bring in more hits. These are not people randomly finding you, but you making sure that your video gets put in front of people who might be looking for it.

HOWEVER! This morning, while tweaking one set of tags, I noticed three tags that I would never have written myself – Visual Art Media – That’s just not in my vocabulary. It sounds American or academic. Or it sounds like the terms a professional tagger would use while summing up a site – standard tags.

SOMEONE has been adding tags to my videos on YouTube! It wasn’t me and I don’t have anyone working on the channel with me. I can’t imagine a hacker being so helpful, therefore it must have been someone at YouTube dropping in a few tags of their own to “help” me along!

Hmmm! Not sure how I feel about that.

A Christmas Carol For You

Here’s a Christmas Carol sung by the Ginger Ninja, Tiddles and Hilda his friends. I did this a couple of years a go. I’ve just worked out how to convert it to video so I can upload it to YouTube.

You are welcome to pass it on to your friends – and Have a Very Happy Christmas!

If you are on FaceBook and can’t see the video, click here for the link

Too Much Customer Service – Direct Line Insurance Fail Miserably

I’ve received a birthday card from Direct Line Insurance and it almost made me feel ill! Do I know these people? Do they know me? I am a faceless e-customer and occasional telephone caller – not a mate. I’m friendly with their staff when I call, but I’ve never had the same person and have never built up any kind of personal relationship. We do have a lot of policies with them, but they can’t be that grateful.

And then there is the design. Bland, bland, bland and deliberately inoffensive. The font is bleak. It may follow their corporate style, but this is not supposed to be a sales leaflet – or is it? That crass addition of my name on the front – different colour – no one puts the name of the birthday person on the front.

The the inside is even more bleak. So as not to identify the manufacturer of the party popper, they have taken the wrapper off, making it look cheap and tacky – it took me a while to work out what it was meant to be.

Enjoy your special day Shoo, of course, should have a comma before my name, but let’s forgive them that. The words are suspended in a sea of white space with no attention to optical alignment. The words hang in that space so that the little bits of snot can dangle from the E and the y.

There are codes printed at the bottom, repeated on the back and there seems to be a related raffle number at the top on the back – do I win a prize if I have the right number?
These numbers make me feel like they are data gathering – not the right spirit.

Oh yes – it arrived much too early, which adds the the thoughtlessness of it. You either put do not open until the specified date on the envelope, or you send it to arrive on the date with a pre birthday postmark or you are late and apologise.

Am I being ungracious?

Uh- uh! Direct Line – you failed – miserably.

Little Princess Trust -Pink Car Rally win Blingmycoach

If you voted for the Pink Car rally on blingmycoach.com last Friday, many thanks. The pink Car Rally won the competition and so will have a pink coach join the rally next year, raising funds for the Little Princess Trust, who provide real hair wigs to children suffering hair loss due to cancer treatement.