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Monday, July 19, 2004

Woah! Got a date...

Yep, someone I've been chatting to has agreed to go out for a drink with me, on Thursday evening to be precise.

Hurrah!

Guess I can update my "wanted" list (see bottom right sidebar entry).

Actually, it was her who was a little bold and asked first. But it's cool. If things had carried on going as well as they were with us getting to know each other, I'd have asked in the next day or two anyway.

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Those dating websites again

I've already written about online dating but up until recently I'd been signed up for one for about 2 years (since June '02) and not had a wink of action (literally - you can send virtual 'winks' to people you might wink/cheesy-smile at for real). I have had a couple of winks in the last few weeks and started considering signing up to send messages, but generally it has been pretty quiet. Mind you I never made a load of effort myself and I didn't subscribe (paid-service) to be able to send/read messages.

Ok I probably started out with a bad (not interesting/funny/sexy enough) profile, and it was definitely an unsexy photo (ex-company mugshot, 'professional' looking). But I did evolve it and specifically went out on a good day some time ago and took a load of photos for it and picked the best look etc...

So earlier this week I looked at the other sites and signed up to a couple more - tried to pick UK-specific (again), just the free sign-ups they all allow so you can put your photo and a bit about yourself on it. Hoped I might find a more active site or at least get more responses.

I'd only been signed up to one of them for a day or two when I got my first wink and a message or two. The difference with this site is that you can see who's been checking your profile. It also means that someone else knows when you've looked at their profile, so sometimes you might think twice about looking but I'm not paranoid enough for it to stop me. So I did the normal search, narrowed it down a bit and tried to just include local-ish (local county-specific) areas. I've also been looking to see who else is online at the time and checking out any profiles that might be interesting. There's a range from very interesting to weird, from 18 year-old students to lonely 60 year-olds, and some incredibly attractive people on some of them (assuming the photos are real).

It sure does boost your confidence and make you feel a load better about yourself to be contacted by other people who like the look of you/your profile. I've never thought I was that attractive (see my about-me page here for evidence, ignore the b&w pixelly one) and sometimes I think about finding one of those "amIhotornot" type sites to get myself honestly rated.

Anyway, I seem to be getting along quite well with one lady in particular from a site and all going well we might end up meeting sometime in the near future. I hope I'm not appearing to be too much a rooky (of these dating sites, or writing the right kind of chatty messages after 2yrs being single).

Need an instant-thesaurus!

Remember my gripe about mis-punctuation a while ago?

I could do with a quick accessible-from-the-desktop thesaurus tool on my computer to help out when you're looking for the right word to fill in a message/email, and you've got a word but it's not quite right or has an image that goes with it that you don't want to portray. I don't actually own a hard-copy paper thesaurus, as I always thought the ones provided with things like MS Word or equivalents (Star Office, etc..) would be good enough. They're certainly quicker to find words in/jump around similar words than a book as long as you have your PC running, but I wouldn't mind a more instant access than that too.

In searching for a web page that might provide something I could twist using a script or little program into what I need, I found a handy reference for anyone not quite sure about grammar.

Common Errors in English
(via a link on Dictionary.com)

Monday, July 05, 2004

It's all new! (clothes)

Got a quarterly bonus, and my yearly one this month so I've been spending some on clothes. I kind of needed a few things anyway, and although I'm not that sure I ought to be spending much on them I've got myself a new jacket (at last!), some new undies, and a nice new shirt. The large majority of which was in the sales and I did need it anyway.

I'd wanted a new jacket for months and months, but couldn't justify £60-odd or more to get one worth having. I have survived on just a zip-up fleece and a thin waterproof for the last few months (since I lost my other nice (thin) jacket), but I've been wanting a thicker one for about a year now (or more). The sales meant I could buy a previously-£80 jacket for just over 40 quid. Great.

There have started to be some really nice patterned shirts appearing on shelves over the last few years, or is it that my taste has changed and I've started to notice them more? Anyway, here's a sample of the new one I got in Next today:
Love the way the diagonal lines change hue creating darker and lighter pattern areas almost at random. Randomness in patterns, or slightly non-regular shapes in patterns (e.g. wobbly edges), or unregular shapes joined interestingly always look good.


CGI or Real?

Here's a test of your abilities to determine real pictures from computer-generated ones:

Fake or Foto

I got 7 out of 10 first go, although I wasn't sure on one of the ones I got wrong and half-guessed. Can you do any better? Anyone who hasn't seen good CG may find it hard to believe the computer-generated ones aren't real.