mmm, candy

I made a new layout day before yesterday with a pretty awesome banner featuring "She's so refined I think I'll kill myself" and also the gum-chewing TwiGeneKelly-Moms from Singin' in the Rain. But then when I looked at it I felt dissatisfied. I was tired of the two-columns-with-banner-above layout; I wanted a new, bolder composition dynamic.

So I spent yesterday investigating layouts with navigation on the side. I like the new Minimalism template with its shiny buttons, rounded corners, and resizability. However, its customizability is low - you can't easily alter the colours (though of course adding a banner is always simple). I ended up using Bloggish, which is styled entirely with CSS.

The layout I've got now is incredibly simple and I'm incredibly in love with it. Considering how little trouble it was to set up, it's kind of amazing how well it turned out! ( Read more... )

the [literally] killer [literal] queen

I was listening to "Killer Queen" the other day and thinking that would make a pretty great tv show!

Silly secret-agent hijinx a la Alias, except the protagonist is the fictionalised young Queen of fictionalised England or some other place with a large and important constitutional monarchy. Then she can use state visits as a cover for assassinations and stuff. It could be pretty awesome. Although possibly more fun to fantasise about than to actually write...

Which begs the question, however: does a queen speak just like a baroness? Also, can you actually ignite dynamite with a laser beam?

links: coraline, stupid shoe sizes, pigeon-smuggling

Coraline: 10" plush replica of Coraline's button-eye doll. Creepy and cute! The crazy knitting genius woman who hand-knitted all the tiny miniature sweaters and gloves in the movie. WOW.

I knew the international shoe sizing conversions were complex, stupid, and frequently misunderstood, but I didn't quite know how MUCH. Sample info from Wikipedia:

UK sizes are based on a unit called the "barleycorn" which is 1/12th of a "hand" (1 hand=4 inches/10.16 cm). The US system is based on the UK system+1, except US women's sizes are either men's+1.5 or men's+1, concurrently and with no explanation. Several major athletic brands (Nike, Reebok, Fila mm) use a different system based on 5mm increments instead of the 4.233333mm of a half-barleycorn. The continental European system is measured in "Paris points", a "Paris point" being 1.5cm. The Asian system is the only metric one.

Some guy tried to smuggle live pigeons into Australia in his tights the other day. He was also travelling with "undeclared eggplant".