Saturday 28 January 2012

Jammy little madam!

I'd like to introduce Jam - one of my reptilian god children whom has moved in with us, as her current owner is moving to a smaller house.

My friend Wills rescued her after he went into a house to retrieve a snake - he found her living in a two foot wooden tea chest with just a heat mat, suffering from MBD -  a bone disease like lizardy osteoporosis caused by lack of vitamin D - she didn't have a UV light in that crate. Her eyesight was also in poor condition due to a "bad" type of bulb, but thankfully we'd caught it early enough.

She IS still super-licky as a result though; dragons use their sense of taste to tell them a lot about their environment and she'd become quite reliant on it whilst her eyes were damaged. The lickiness is just habit now and is very cute!

Wills did a marvellous job on treating her MBD - besides a little stiffness and a slightly quirky mouth shape, she's in surprisingly good shape. She'll need extra calcium supplements for most of her life and work to overcome her pickiness and dragon-antisocial-ness, but I think we can manage that!

Yes, my sister helped me come to an utterly funky name: Jam SRT10 - that makes her a Jammy Dodge-r!

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Shongololo-a-gogo!

Or not, as it turns out.

Five of the six survived - something really heavy had been dropped on the box, but that's not the bit that threw me. They're not very black. More kind of bluey-yellowy with red arrows down their backs.

More kind of like Vietnamese Rainbow Millipedes. Adult ones.

Hmm. Well, I rang my supplier and he was a bit surprised and annoyed - I paid £46, which according to him means I would have got the 'pedes at discounted price anyway. As they're Viets, I've got them for half price and he's really going to bash some ears over it.

Thankfully I'm pretty sure I can care for them - I'm not inclined to rip my newly planted jungle apart to find them again!

He's sending me out four of the RIGHT species to arrive on Friday for £33 instead, which is the right price. Mostly. The website was badly out of date, so I've got 3 at £20 which I shouldn't have, but I've paid full price for the last one and half postage.

That works out quite nicely - I was considering getting some Rainbows anyway, and they should live quite happily with the African Giants.

Whilst you'e here, I really recommend you guys have a look at THIS- it's a 360 degree interactive photograph of the night sky. It's amazing... A truly new perspective on the universe we live in. Excuse me, I'm going back to play. I've just seen a pretty red little galaxy I want a closer look at.

Monday 23 January 2012

I'm a terrarist. I keep terrariums.

I realised that my new project is seriously transcontinental: I now have a gorgeous Chinese "crystal" vivarium for my New Caledonian Crested Gecko (who was bred in Somerset). I ordered some wonderful ferns shipped from Ireland which will be watered by my German luxury "Lucky Reptile" misting systems and lit by the specialist lighting units I'm importing from the Netherlands. I also added a Canadian waterfall and a Malaysian fogger unit...

Anyway, all this equals one very happy little gecko - once he gets used to the idea.

Yeah. Geckos don't like change - Terry spent three days swearing at a new plant in his old tank, edging round as far away from it as possible, going "FFFF! Fffff! ffff!"

So he was deeply unhappy once I put him into a whole new house.

"Hey, wait. That looks like... that looks like MY plant. What have you DONE?!"

Poor Terry. But he'll get over himself and appreciate what I've done.

Better yet, it won't need to change a huge amount for the next however long needed - and as geckos can live fifteen to twenty years (possibly more!) he will be a very happy little lizard indeed.

In fact, once he'd had a nap on a vine for a bit, he discovered that there's a lot more vine in here. Bouncy vines. Bouncy vines that are fun to jump around on!

Ooh! And a pile of rocks with water - with which you can really annoy the owner by sneaking round the back and peeping cheekily over the top. Heh, but I'll have the last laugh when the shongololos move in - he won't want to be stuffing himself under piles of leaves - otherwise he's going to get walked on by very large arthropods!




Saturday 21 January 2012

Crystal Clear!

My rather nice Atasuki Crystal vivarium arrived, and so I have spent the last couple of days flat out working on it - fighting with that dense, prickly cocofibre background board (which, now I've sealed it in place and planted the tank, I have discovered swells and warps when it gets water on it - wonderful...), getting coated in clay dust from the hydroleca and spilling compost on the floor.

As you can see, I've also installed the base of a fountain in the right hand corner, reinforced with Japanese green cobbles as well as a magnetic food and water bowl "mushroom" shelf up on the left - with a nice wriggly bit of liana to make dinnertime easier.

In the rare moment that I haven't been wielding my silicone tube or various bags of supplies, I've been pottering around on the internet for inspiration and design ideas...

Which was when I stumbled across something simply AWESOME. At the time, I was looking into invertebrates to help maintain my jungle tank - I already stock woodlice, springtails and worms when I discovered the shongololo - otherwise known as the Giant African Black Train Millipede:



These big, beautiful black bugs can get to an impressive fifteen inches long - but are calm and placid eaters of decomposing junk - and have proved marvellous terrarium companions for Crested Geckos.

Shongololos will be perfect for a tank this size- they'll utilise the wide floor and deep mulch base, as well as enjoy creeping up and down the vines to scare Terry occasionally. Half of the "jungle" floor is from the old tank, so it's well decomposed and will all kinds of tasty things hidden in it for when they decide to tunnel - and lots of sphagnum moss on the surface to play in too.

Friday 20 January 2012

Horrible Housework

Oh dear... I'm turning into a right housewife whilst I'm out of work. I swept the floors - with a broom! I even hoovered all the dragon tanks and polished their water bowls. FSM help me, I even wielded a DUSTER today.

Mind you, the house looks kinda... tidy. But I suppose there's only so long you can keep sending out applications before you start to realise you're now sending them to jobs you've already applied for. I wonder if that helps?
Between hunting down a job to apply for, following up and chasing down a potential employers, I've been trying my damndest to get the "Splat-A-Sloth" trophy.
As you can see, it's not exactly consistent - the top one really puzzled me. Though not nearly as much as when I finally hit a perfect score - can you see the green puppet?! I still haven't got my trophy (and I'm not sure why) but I'll keep trying.

If you're going to do something, do it properly eh?

Unlike these guys. Close, but no cigar.

 Oh! Oh EUUUUUUU.... I have dealt with some really, really disgusting things in my time - but this is the new top of my list; picture the scene - I have my wet 'n' dry dustbuster in hand, happily cleaning up a dried poop from Mocha's tank... When suddenly there is this bad, loud "ZING/SPLUTCH" combination sound. I'm suddenly coated in stinky, slimy, snotty bits of unidentified matter.

 Closer investigation discovers that a medium sized slug had sneaked into the dustbuster through the nozzle, eaten some of the dust and crap on the sponge, then happily gone to sleep BEHIND the sponge.

 Whereupon it had an unpleasant awakening when my 'buster promptly sucked it through the engine, through the propeller blades and disintegrated it into little, sticky bits of slug goo.

 All over the floor. Mocha's tank. My clothes. My skin. MY HAIR. BLAURGH! WTF?!?! YURRRRRGH!

Wednesday 18 January 2012

G'night Grandad Cats


They say a picture paints a thousand words - and to me, this says it all!

Yes, that's a cat's whisker.

Just to let you folks know, he would like support for Cuddles Cattery - if you're interested in sending a donation, it is to be sent to Julie Burrell, 72 Wilton Road, Humberston, Grimsby DN36 4AW.
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
Sorry, the internet is switched off today. SOPA, doncha know.                                  
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 

Monday 16 January 2012

You got WHAT for your birthday?!

I had a grand birthday - or rather, two of them, as we celebrated at my Mum's house early.

I LOVE the way Mum does turkey - peeled lemon slices and a thick coat of bacon - most, most delicious. One of my presents was a jar of English Provender cranberry sauce, so I'm very happy indeed. Mind you, one of my presents was a big bag of lightweight compost. But that's ok, it's exactly what I wanted!

You see, on Wednesday I'm having this vivarium delivered - an almighty badboy of a tank, all the way from China.

Terry is getting a major upgrade for his old, broken vivarium; the new one is a metre high by a meter wide. It'll take some time to build as I have the coco fibre backing to install, the ground layers to build and to figure out how best to suspend all the new vines for the gecko to leap around on, but I'm sure it's going to look fantastic when I'm done.

I also got a nice big box of my favourite makeup from Mum, LOTS of chocolate, taken to see the film I've been desperate to see since it came out (Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows - great stuff!) and given a multitude of vouchers. The M&S one bought us a marvellous lunch and I'm looking forwards to using my Da Vinci's voucher.

I do have to write another important post - but I'll do that a little later. The sun doesn't always shine, and today is not a day entirely populated by daffodils and halcyon skies. It was lovely though - thanks.

Sunday 15 January 2012

Hurray, Upgrades!

Virgin, our internet provider, have released plans to upgrade everybody - that means come March-April we should be on a 100mbps line for the same price as our 50mbps connection. Which is nice, because I seriously thought about the 100, but decided we wouldn't use it enough to justify the extra £20 a month.

However, in response to Virgin Media's plans, BT said: "It is no surprise to see that Virgin are following our lead by doubling speeds. We announced we would do this for our fibre products last autumn and so they are trying to catch up with us."

Uhhh... I have to snark at that - BT's fastest available speed to the majority of its customers is currently just 40Mbps.

Saturday 14 January 2012

Pronunciation Perfected?

Further to the almighty scone argument, (which has had some superb responses over on Google+, thank you to all involved) I found this rather neat little rhyme:

 "I asked the maid in dulcet tone
To order me a buttered scone
The silly girl has been and gone
And ordered me a buttered scone."

Better yet is "The Chaos" by G. Nolst Trenite. (a.k.a. Charivarius 1870-1946)
You need to read it aloud to get the full benefit:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!"

Thursday 12 January 2012

Postcards and Positions (vacant)

The surprise I was arranging arrived yesterday. I got a call from my mother, almost exclusively made of a loud, excitable "EEEEEE!" with much giggling.

As some of you know, I enjoy sending my mother bizarre things in the post; a fresh lemon with a smiley face, a dried snakeskin, etc - and I landed the best one this week, with a little help from a friend. This morning, my mother received a postcard, simply saying "To Emma, love Amber."

 Sent and signed by her favourite author, Jasper Fforde!

 He's a lovely chap and was more than happy to help out - he has a love of the surreal, and this was right up his street - needless to say, my mum was delighted!

In other news, I'm not sure how well my interview went today, but the lady at the Job Centre was a little gobsmacked. After updating my details (which were at least five years out of date!) she asked me "What have you done to find a job this week?"

Well... "I've used six different job sites, applied for forty jobs, and had three interviews. One this morning in fact."

I'm also waiting to hear back if I've landed a different job, three months data input and checking - if I get it. so should His Lordship. We've agreed to join the firm as a team, as we have work styles that will compliment each other nicely: he has a talent figures, and I can data confirm the barcodes and references at astonishing speeds. It's only temporary, but it's better than nothing!

Monday 9 January 2012

Perfectly Patient?

What a dull day... I was expecting two deliveries and a phone call today - none of which showed up. It turns out that one of my deliveries has been delayed and should arrive tomorrow and the other one, Terry's new vivarium, has been returned to the sender by the courier after they broke it. And forgot to tell me. Niiiice.

Hopefully my actual work will get back to me soon, but as someone in HR really messed up and deleted my Employee Reference, they're having to treat me as a potential new member of staff. Thankfully I was prepared for this sort of thing, but my savings won't last me forever.

Also, I'm running out of work to apply for, having blitzed out 21 applications in the last couple of days.

So, I spent the rest of today cleaning - I got two loads of washing done, the backlog of pots in the kitchen, His Lordship's "laptop" table, the entire downstairs floors... Oh, the thrilling life I lead!

Hah. For months Sandy has turned her nose up at the pink Dragon Bites I offer them all for hand-fed snacks - today I got naffed off with it and dumped the remains into her bowl rather than bother holding it out for her. And half an hour later, I've just seen her with her head in the bowl, chowing down with gusto! Awkward bloody lizard.

Saturday 7 January 2012

Word up, everybody say...

I was having an argument today with His Lordship regarding pronunciation. I won't go into the whole "Scone" vs "Scon" thing here, because everyone knows that it is "Scone". Go on, I dare you to disagree in the comments with a sound and logical argument! (To which I will respond: "Buttcookies!")

Today's was around the word Sigil. One of those bizarre G's that sound off as a J, or rather DG. I don't like it. I accept that SIDG-il is the right way to say it, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I have this problem with a few other pet hate words - my least favourite being bouillon - where the L's turn into this bizarre Y sound. At least Welsh double L gives a nice hard, gruff sound.

The French sort of dissolve their letters until they become a watery, pathetic alphabet soup. I'm sure it's a very romantic language, but what do you pay more attention to when you hear it? "Avertissement!" or "Warnung!" - heh, give me Germanic based languages any day.

And "Mirepoix"!? It makes your mouth feel like it's jammed full of little tiny bits of yuck. Which is a fairly accurate description. I much prefer the Italian version Soffritto.

On the other hand, I do love the word "Interrobang".

Thursday 5 January 2012

Fixin' a Fogger

Most of you probably know that for the last... oooh, year? I've been having to keep my power supply cable in place with a carefully maintained arrangement of elastic bands. But finally, a new £8 bit of cable from Amazon has fixed my laptop! Better yet, it's a straight pin, so I won't knacker it like I do the L pins.

Though it does mean that now I can't really justify a £500 tablet computer I've been eyeing up for some time. Eh, win some, lose some. My £175 little blue PC works beautifully again.

Speaking of fixing things, I fixed my fogger unit. It's one I salvaged from eBay (spares and repairs) quite some time back in a bundle of crap. It needed a new sonic plate, mesh, buffer, ring and fuse - easy when you know how and saved me a few quid. It's been in my cupboard for ... blimey, must be about eight years now, waiting for me to make use of it.

I'm planning to install this in the fountain unit now I've got that all fixed too (I even upgraded the fountain pump) - I love being a terrarium twiddler.

As it uses an extraordinary amount of water, I'll only be using it for show - you couldn't run it permanently for fear of flooding out the substrate and burning out the sonic plates.

 Someone asked me earlier why lizards seem to like window sills...

Well, from a dragon's perspective, windows are great, because there's so much to look at - the roof of human vivaria is a funny colour, it changes a lot and sometimes the pretty white bits move. The plants move (and are WAY bigger!) - even our heatspot moves. There are sometimes other humans outside (though we don't go bob at them and chase them out of our territory - very odd. Must be a more passive species, they often wave at each other - wussies.) and big shiny noisy things that look like moving vivariums, but with smaller windows. Weird.

Monday 2 January 2012

This year, Mum made us wear balloons for hats. And of course, that evolved into targeting the sweetest natured person in the family to turn them into a balloon-person. His Lordship is COVERED in about 100 inflated water bombs - and though I had to find him a straw so he could drink, he patiently sat in his balloon suit (roasting slowly as his body heat trapped in the bubbles!) until my sister's birthday party started. Hehehhehe!

No-one seemed to notice that Tesco's accidentally messed up the party food order; in fact, the Cornish pasties instead of quiches were a hit with me, and the samosas were lovely. It was a slightly odd mix of flavours, but Mum saved the day with food on sticks. A party is incomplete if there aren't any food on sticks!

And, as usual, the fireworks were a fiasco... But then it wouldn't be my Stepdad's fireworks display if it wasn't. This year included the usual dangerously aimed rockets, but the grand finale ...

Was my 16 shot barrage box.

Of course, the instructions were disregarded and the hefty clump of explosives was placed on top of the wet, sloping tin roof of the shed. I ran across the lawn shouting sensible advice like "No! It needs to be sunk in the ground - sunk in the GROUND!" but it was lit and too late. Sadly I missed the fireworks going off - I was too busy running back to shove our guests to safety behind the fence: the explosive force caused the box to bounce down the roof before dropping down the side of the shed and ricocheting brilliant red balls of fire wildly around the garden.


Apparently the dragons had a good New Years party too... I can only assume they have terrible hangovers to be sat so quietly together in Sandy's tank. And yes, those are REAL dragon hats, with pompoms - I came up with the design when making a party hat for Noa's birthday.

As I was ordering new bulbs for the dragon tanks (they need replacing at LEAST once a year), I spotted that my favourite supplier was stocking the vivarium I wanted to replace Terry Tackety Toes's with.


He has been waiting for almost a year for a new tank since the bottom panel completely blew out - it's literally just waiting to give up on me. The new one is a meter high, so I may need a new cork backboard for it, but I'm going to have great fun rigging it up - fitting the mist system, repositioned lighting, new plants, perhaps a fountain...

Terry will be most cross though, he HATES change - It's a territory thing; he has spent a long time examining EVERY part of his home and can bounce around it without any thought. He gets very upset if I move something or put a new plant in - in fact, he spent two days carefully staying as far away from the Lilly I put in, before creeping up on it, fuffing and bipping at it. But now he likes it, and is sleeping in one of the bigger leaves.