Zombie

There are no rules for crying and grieving. We come to terms with loss in our own way. My thoughts are with you

So - when is it unacceptable to chew gum?

but you would want reasonable odds of at least getting there

Urrgghh, Pepsi - evil stuff! Neat story

"I have a growing investment portfolio, some real estate, and a stable life that affords me anything a middle class man would want." But the only thing you can take with you is your tats Someone once said that all that truly matters in life is those you have loved, and those who have loved you.

Urgent News Update! "Is your car infested with spiders?" "Mazda has a spider problem, and now it's issuing a voluntary recall to implement a "bug fix" in every sense of the word. A certain species, known as the yellow sac spider, is spinning webs in the vent lines of Mazda 6 sedans." http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/6/5587116/mazda-6-software-update-addresses-spider-problem I don't want to alarm anyone but Mazda has had previous spider infestation problems. At least Mazda is being honest and open with the recall. But that Mazda hire car you're about to drive away from the airport? How do you know it's had the spiders removed? And what about other manufacturers with similar problems but they've hushed them up? Cars are very attractive spider homes. Nice and dry. Lots of nooks and crannies to hide and build nests in. Here are two scenarios to think about. You're driving your car at cruising speed, head nodding to the beat of some good tunes, when: 1. You notice spiders crawling out of the windscreen vents, or 2. You open the air vents and spiders come flying into your face What would you do? a. check mirrors, indicate and pull into the side of the road when safe to do so; or b. calmly swat away the spiders with one hand while maintaining full control of the vehicle; or c. scream, swerve and crash? Of course there are many other possible scenarios in a car infested with spiders so you need to consider how you would deal with those as well. Happy motoring .

Take On Me More good stuff on the car radio This is the only song from the 80s that had a real impact on me - it's just a brilliant pop song with a stunningly original animated pencil drawing video and the super-hot Norwegian lead singer of A-ha, Morten Harket. What's not to like?

As a reader it seems to me the most important thing is to have something to say. No writing course can teach you that - it comes from within. Then, of course, you need to be able to say it in an engaging and entertaining way. Unless you're writing instruction manuals or audit reports you have to be able to grab and hold the reader's attention. Yes, good writing courses and writing degrees will surely help but they are not sufficient, nor necessary, and will require commitment and money. And a poor or mediocre course will probably do more harm than good. As you said yourself, a lot of big writers - including Nobel Laureates - never went near a writing course. What they did, though, was study language and people. My view, for what it's worth, is that general language courses are more important - and not just English language. You must understand how language works so I would definitely include an English language course and, as you're going abroad, why not a foreign one too? If nothing else, the ability to use language and communicate is a key fundamental skill however you choose to earn your living so time and money spent studying and understanding language is never wasted. You can study writing by reading quality published writing - free from your local library And read widely, so you expose yourself to all kinds of different writing styles. There is no single style of writing just as there is no single style of music. Reading and listening would become very boring if there were. And you can study people and what they say and how they interact for the price of a cup of coffee at a pavement cafe, or on a bus, or train, and with your friends and family. Watch and listen and keep a notebook handy so you can jot down what people actually say in real life. Good luck with whatever you decide to study .

Happy anniversary to you both! As Deep Purple, Yes, and that Virgil fella said - love conquers all

Musical misogynism has been around a long time and its worst culprits are vile rap artists and labels who've built huge businesses around it. Just a shame this is such a crap song and witless video

that's just brilliant!

This has just sold on eBay for £108. There were 46 bids These details were listed to sell it Need this doll gone NOW!! We hear odd sounds and my son has been scratched on his face in his sleep. (pic no 3) He's started to sleepwalk. I don't want this doll in the house anymore!! This doll is very old and very worn plz study pics! On 10-May-14 at 14:58:01 BST, seller added the following information: I've have also woken up with bruises on my leg with no explanation as to how they got there. And my eldest son has also said he saw a boy in his room one night he said he had like a whitish face and he walked by and just flew out the window. Presumably the buyer wanted a little something to horrify their partner, traumatise a pet, or give their children PTSD...

yeah, I saw these cute little poppets on last Saturday's show

and today another XP update from Microsoft... Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Size: 5.7 MB After the download, this tool runs one time to check your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps remove any infection that is found. If an infection is found, the tool will display a status report the next time that you start your computer. A new version of the tool will be offered every month. If you want to manually run the tool on your computer, you can download a copy from the Microsoft Download Center, or you can run an online version from microsoft.com. This tool is not a replacement for an antivirus product. To help protect your computer, you should use an antivirus product. More information for this update can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/890830

Everlasting Love Heard this on the car radio yesterday - it's great driving music! A 1967 hit for Robert Knight, it's a simple song but it has top 40 charted in the UK every decade since. I think it's success is down to the brilliant arrangement and production but, whatever, it sure has everlasting appeal

Eurovision It's on Saturday!! *jumps up and down excitedly* This is Grade A Trash TV Heaven! Invented after WWII as a way for Europe to engage in combat without body bags, it's basically a contest of rubbish songs with countries ganging up on each other and fighting proxy wars by rigged voting and bribery, and with Graham Norton presenting what's not to like? Every now and again an original quality song will win just to spoil things - like Belarus singer / songwriter / violinist Alexander Rybak's Fairytale winning for Norway in 2009 - but these are merely aberrations

OK my "keeper" is radio - because it's portable, batteries last months and I listen all the time, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the car... everywhere but that's 'cos in UK we're very lucky to have 4 national networks with no commercials, just content, and the main one, Radio 4, is every kind of "talk radio": news, docs, comedy, drama, science, arts. I'd only give it up if you were gonna take away my plumbing Radios are old technology - since 1922 in Britain - and I can still use my granddad's old 1930s set, which is pretty cool

...and astronomy. With an attachment to an ordinary amateur 'scope you can get impressive pics http://canadianastronomy.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/smartphone-astrophotography-how-to-photograph-the-moon-planets-with-your-phone/

I love these "cars of the future” from the 50s and 60s, especially the American ones My favorite is this - the Chrysler Turbine car powered by a gas turbine, a modified jet engine Unlike most concept cars this was actually built. In fact 55 were produced in 1963 and extensively road tested by American families covering over 1 million miles. It was as economical as similar cars of the period with good performance and, with very few moving parts, was reliable and cheap to maintain. It could also run on any unleaded volatile liquid fuel including petrol, diesel, paraffin, alcohol - even whisky and perfume Users were sad to hand the cars back to Chrysler when the test programme ended in 1964. Engineers delivered all their design briefs and Chrysler was going to put the car into production but new car safety laws diverted investment into complying with new requirements such as seat belts and airbags, and government support for the program was pulled - so Chrysler abandoned the project and had all the cars crushed to avoid import duties as the car bodies had been built in Italy However, six were saved for museums and 3 others survive in private hands and are still maintained and drivable. Jay Leno owns one *jealous* and it's worth watching this short doc he made

Just to confirm, in the UK anyone can watch pretty much everything without a TV licence provided they never watch "live" TV on their device - just wait the 20 minutes or so for it to appear in iPlayer or catch-up players for the other channels. In reality this means the only stuff you can't watch is the news and some movies. And when BBC3 goes online-only you'll be able to watch it streaming "live" http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/tv-licence

Smartphone Tablet PC/Mac TV+radio Two of these will be taken away from you forever. New devices are always coming through so "forever" shouldn't be too much hardship long term But for now you get to choose: - one to keep - one to dump .

Absolutely, but I did in fact acknowledge that there are "particular uses where it works very well" and these are many ranging from, say, stock control through to, as you point out, novel and interesting uses by artists, although personally I found the colour palette of Hockney's "iPad art" to be utterly insipid - it doesn't begin to approach the vividness, vibrancy and vitality of his traditionally painted canvases. Absolutely, it is possible. My response, though, is... just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done From my somewhat limited use of iPad it's clear that so much of its functionality is second rate - the touch screen doesn't like dry skin or my mothers old skin - the video and still camera function is horrible for serious work - internet browsing gives you "internet lite" - you don't see the full version of webpages, just the slimmed, trimmed and de-featured version the iPad wants you to see, not the fully featured version I will always want - the... oh that's enough!

The way I see it iPad is not a device for serious general computing activities. There are particular uses where it works very well but outside of those it's a nice-to-have toy .

Ooops, sorry, a spurious "x" got added to the link try this http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/02/microsoft-fixes-flaw-in-internet-explorer-on-xp-despite-end-of-security-patches yep, that's me - and the reason I "want to avoid" is because I resent any device that steals my quality personal time having to learn its new way of doing the same thing I previously invested my time learning and where there is no "return" for me in terms of significantly improved productivity, or pleasure I seriously doubt universal speech recognition will be here any time soon. Fact is people have enough difficulty understanding each other - even when they're speaking the same language! What we will see more of, though, is "trained" speech recognition where devices learn to understand individuals' speech patterns