Gifted Typist

Because it’s hot and sunny and summery outside, I give you more paradise in the Maritimes. .

On Saturday morning I awoke just before six to the sounds of “clink clink” and “chink clunk” coming through my open window. Curious, I looked outside and saw something unusual. Spread out all over the neighbour’s lawn was stuff, tonnes of stuff, furniture, mirrors, lamps, books, everywhere, at six in the morning. A yard sale. [...]

And that’s no big deal. Right? Well, no big deal until I tell you that I’ve never seen an episode of The Simpsons before. (Well, there was that time in the 90s when I saw part of an episode in Czech and I didn’t speak Czech at the time. Long story.) When I came out [...]

Naomi Campbell has ghost-written a book. Now, if only I could get someone to ghost-read it for me. Mark Lamar, British radio personality.

A generation ago middle age was anywhere between 30-45. Now, the on-line dictionaries put it somewhere between 40-65. That’s quite a leap considering the average life expectancy hasn’t changed in that generation.If you put a literal interpretation on today’s definition of middle age, that would mean our average life expectancy would be 80-130. So what [...]

And while we’re at it, let’s junk the cap Ws in World Wide Web, and cap E in email. I’ve never understood the maniacal attachment to capital letters for all things related to the internet. We don’t use a cap T for telephone, R for radio or railroad, cap Ps for pencil and paper and [...]

Here are some images taken during a trip to majestic Prince Edward Island. It is the land of Anne of Green Gables, but there is so much more to this island. The coastal scenery and the seafood beat the heck out of Anne, although I was loyal follower of the trouble-making red-head. These shots were [...]

I’ve been meme tagged by Grammar Grrrl Beth from A Cup of Coffey to answer five random questions. 1. Who was your Tiger Beat crush? Do you still find him cute? Tiger Beat was a teen magazine of the ’70s read by mostly pre-teen girls. My crush was Tony DeFranco who used to sing Heartbeat, [...]

Children of progressive parents admitted only on leashes -notice on a London restaurant

This is a cautionary tale about a kid, a swimming pool and a mother who took her eye off the ball for a few seconds. This story turned out OK, but it might not have. And the mother still has nightmares about what might have happened that day.

Thanks to GT readers Yam, Rowan of Cheddar and Deepti who discovered the bug in the new Flickr plugin I installed last night. They informed me that the plugin didn’t work in Explorer. I got in touch with the developer and within hours he had a workaround. And guess what? It works. Have a look [...]

UPDATE: We may have identified a bug in this plugin. It doesn’t seem to work in Explorer. Working on the problem. Try it in Firefox. Some of the original GT lurkers might recall one or two of these shots from many moons ago on the old Blogspot. I’m giving them a test run here to [...]

Call me a prickly pedant, but will someone please tell CBC radio news announcers that the correct pronunciation for President of Russia is vluh-DEE-meer POO-tin, that’s Vladimir Putin WITH the T. Some have taken to calling the man Pooooo-n, dropping the T altogether. You may say Pe-shaw – what’s in a T? Well, a lot [...]

What with Ozzy Osborne’s first wife’s first cousin visiting, the tall ships sailing in and out of port, the White Stripes being in town, the jazz festival happening, Beauty and the Beast on stage, my Photoshop studies ongoing and that strange heat-giving yellow orb in the sky – I believe the ancients called it the [...]

I was horrified to find the other week that my second son is taking drugs – my very best ones too. Bob Monkhouse, British Comedian.