Tweets on 2008-12-04

Going to work on an egg #
Health training. 4 clinically obese councillors. 2 thin trainers. #
@willhowells aren’t most US government works public domain anyway? in reply to willhowells #
Hearing siren calls from the electric blanket. “take a warm cosy nap! Just a few mins to warm toes!” #
@heleduffett I had no idea you were a vice expert 🙂 #
Prop 8 the musical – http://tr.im/1t51 #

Tweets on 2008-12-03

@markpack @helenduffett indeed, earthstopping news. in reply to markpack #
Snow? pathetic. Even so, I’m struggling to convince myself that the best place for me today is NOT in bed with the electric blanket on. #
A case I first dealt with in 2003 just bubbled over again. Then: AF/23. Now LD/76XX. #
@HelenDuffett – presumably you know about Leon? You can ask them to make boxes up of the chocs you prefer, eg 1 kilo coffee flavoured chox in reply to HelenDuffett #
@jamesgraham almost as unpleasant as yesterday’s stories about “grooming civil servants to make them leak” in reply to jamesgraham #
@warrenellis hello in reply to warrenellis #
Moved by R4 prog about nuclear deterrent. It all comes down to a man with a West Country accent pulling a gun trigger wired to a missile. #
@markpack so are mice. Bit unfortunate when you consider @snapesbabe’s snakes in reply to markpack #

A sobering thought about Christmas cards

It’s no secret I’m not a particularly Christmassy person – read here about why I don’t like the orgy of commercialism – but I do like to send cards out. In the main this is to a group of people I don’t talk to much but don’t entirely want to lose touch with. So I send a jokey card from Private Eye, and one of those much maligned Xmas newsletters (here’s last year’s) about what the cats have been getting up to in school, etc.

And people send me cards too. This year, I’m definitely getting organised to do something with them. And getting organised to write down who sent us one.

The thing is, people also send cards to Jenny, who lived in this house until she died in August 2005. There were shovel-loads in Christmas 2005, which we took to the estate agent who (hopefully!) passed them onto the vendors who could marry them up with Jenny’s address book and let people know the sad news.

But there are a persistent handful of cards which still arrive for Jenny, still with bits of personal data (“Phil’s recovering nicely from his second heart-attack…”) but with no address. So we can’t let them know the world has moved on and their contact list is out of date.

So here’s my plea. When you send Christmas cards this year, include your address. Put a sticky label on the outside or your full address somewhere inside. That way, if the worst has happened and someone other than your intended recipient is opening their cards this year, they can let you know what’s what.

PS – one exciting thing this year for my cards… I’ve stocked up on James Bond stamps to make the festive greeting that little bit more interesting! Hmm, Royal Mail website has stopped working, will check link in AM.

EDIT 2011 – See this post for the final piece of information about Jenny’s friends sending Christmas cards.

Aha – suppress a category in feed

Dec3

For a while I’ve been importing blog posts into Facebook automatically. I’ve also been importing Tweets automatically into Facebook updating my status.

This has meant, since I started automatically making blog posts of tweets, that I have been importing tweets into Facebook twice – as they go in statuses, and again every morning as an imported note.

I have now learned how to suppress an entire category from appearing in a feed.

So, if you would like to subscribe to my blog without receiving the daily Twitter post, use this address:

http://www.alexfoster.me.uk/feed?cat=-19

Whereas if all the tweeting doesn’t bother you, use this:

http://www.alexfoster.me.uk/feed

Next to learn… how to use Feedburner to combine my postings here with my postings on Lib Dem Voice (

http://www.libdemvoice.org/author/niles/feed

) into one handy feed to present to Facebook…

Thanks to Perishable Press for the skillz.

Tweets on 2008-12-02

Dec2

* isn’t entirely sure these trousers were dry when I put them away 😦 #
@qwghlm chocolate isn’t food and drink, it’s a luxury. At least as far as VAT is concerned. http://tr.im/1oab in reply to qwghlm #
Dead impressed with http://tr.im/ which tracks how people have used your shortened urls. #
@helenduffett trousers where wet when put away but not wet when taken out again. Just stiff. And with machine mangled to-do list in pocket in reply to HelenDuffett #
@owenblacker so it’s not like just one square brick, then? in reply to owenblacker #

Tweets on 2008-12-01

Dec1

@iaindale meinst Du Rosenstolz mir gefallen wuerden? in reply to iaindale #
@rfenwick Waldorf Bites: diced walnut and apples in mayo on chunks of celery. in reply to rfenwick #

Tweets on 2008-11-29

Nov29

Not for the first time, questioning my time commitments. 11.5 entire days spent watching Law and Order and no time to tidy my house. #
@gapingvoid gare du nord is approx one mile on foot from le web. in reply to gapingvoid #
@hughmcguire misreading your #question as wanting to sort tweets by ego and wondering how on earth that would work. in reply to hughmcguire #
@helenduffett is it fair to quote from as-yet-unpublished articles on LDV? 🙂 in reply to HelenDuffett #
Think this is the first time ever a new posting on LDV has led to a flurry of text messages appearing. #
@joswinson it’s still November! I hope those christmas cards are headed a long way from home in reply to joswinson #
Not sure whether it’s rude to tweet whilst on the phone when you have been asked to tweet? Retracting earlier accusation cf @helenduffett #

Tweets on 2008-11-28

Nov28

@owenblacker quite intrigued with the notion of Pachelbel with carillon and cannon… in reply to owenblacker #

Tweets on 2008-11-27

Nov27

Wondering how long it will be before Advent calendars start in November. #

Tweets on 2008-11-26

Nov26

Coming perilously near to bedtime drink disaster as the gravy granules edge closer to the cocoa. #
On a scale of 1-10, just how wrong would it be to eat all of P’s chocolate advent calendar before he wakes up? #
@jamesgraham we have this informal rule – chocolate hidden in bedroom is private, chocolate left in kitchen can be eaten overnight. in reply to jamesgraham #
@jamesgraham for the avoidance of doubt, P is 36 🙂 🙂 in reply to jamesgraham #
Turning off @markpack’s “critical facilities”. #

Niles's Blog

Teaching, food and other random, infrequent wibblings