Google & Royal Engagement

Ok so I wasn't going to post here again but Google is officially pissing me off. Their latest "features" of Instant, Suggest and Preview are 'in-your-face-cannot-turn-off' ideas which have been created in the last few years. Suggest has been around for a while but Instant, the newest "feature" and Preview, also very new, are the latest ways Google has chosen to piss us all off.

Suggest...whilst annoying...was previously able to be turned off. Since Instant was launched that option is now gone and we are stuck with a feature most of us don't want. Preview is also blaring on to our screens and is by no means subtle. The major problem for me is that it eats bandwidth and for someone whose bandwidth barely lasts as it is I don't need another 'feature' downloading crap I don't want.

So what has this got to do with the recent royal engagement....well Google Instant, Preview and Suggest....like the endless news of the royal engagement....gives me information I don't want. I don't care who's engaged to who, I don't care what sites load when I'm halfway through typing "chemical elements + francium" and it decides to give me stuff about crap I'm not interested in because I've stopped to check that it's "francium" and not "fransium" and I certainly don't care what a site looks like if I can't read it and all I've done is click randomly to activate the scroll wheel.

Google....as far as I can see....has lost the plot. YouTube has been ruined with ads and comment verifiers (even when you are logged in) since Google took over. They've wrecked gmail contacts layout with the new design and now they've butchered the thing that made them so famous and popular to begin with: the search page.

See...we don't want it. Google became popular because it loaded fast and didn't clutter with ads. Not because you tried to read our minds, make us into robots, force your preferences on us instead of letting us choose our own preferences. And they certainly didn't gain popularity by hogging bandwidth (yes I live in the backwater country known as Australia which still limited bandwidth).

Google...to summarise...no longer caters to the searcher but expects the searcher to adapt to them. FYI Microsoft did that and they lost a lot of their market to a company which didn't. I just really hope the same happens to Google if they don't shape up. It would, at the very least, be very entertaining poetic justice.

Office 2007

Ok...I hate Office 2007. Among those who know me that is no secret. It makes the tiny amount of the page available even smaller with that bar and every time I've tried to do something it breaks now (I don't have it any more thank goodness). Not to mention the fact that it costs a fortune and eats up my computer memory.

However...I do like the program created by Microsoft to assist in the transition. It's where you open a Word 2003 simulation, click on what you would normally do, and then it will show you how to do it in 2007. A little late for this post perhaps but it's still cool. Check it out with the downloadable version before or try the online version at their website.

Kudos to Microsoft for this. It's an ingenious idea.

Download Simulation Word 2003-2007

Jamie's Food Revolution - OMG!

Just finished watching Jamie's Food Revolution and oh my god! For those who haven't watched Jamie Oliver has traveled to the US to look into what schools feed the kids and why people are dying from Heart Disease and Diabetes. Trying to "create a seed of change".

Personally I agreed with EVERYTHING he said. And found myself getting incredibly defensive of Jamie as just about every person in the town was snide, rude and unhelpful. He's there to help people!

The food being served to these primary school children was just plain disgraceful! Pizza for breakfast. Chicken Nuggets for lunch. All fruit thrown in the bin and rules which insisted on idiotic guidelines. I was utterly appalled at the attitudes of the townspeople and personally thought they deserved to be called idiots!

Our attitude toward food continues to baffle and horrify me. I found recently that a cream I'd bought had sugar in it and that to me signifies the complete idiocy of our culture today. We accept the insane but if 100 years ago we'd been told that we'd put sugar in cream and live on oil we'd have thought it was a joke. And it seems like a joke except for one thing...we're killing ourselves and the younger generation. That's not a joke. That's scary!

I had to eat my Sushi just to keep reminding myself I wasn't eating the disgusting food on the screen but I really don't believe we'll change. I wish I could describe how shocked and upset watching that was for me. A good guy, trying to help others and being blackballed whichever way he turned. I can say I was shocked, horrified, appalled, felt physically sick and upset but really none of those things, though all true, come close to what I felt whilst watching that. It was both distressing and just plain awful to watch.

I sit here, thinking about this and feeling like if I believe hard enough we can change it but I don't think we will. I WISH we would. We are very very smart in some ways. We invent things all the time and have advanced beyond our wildest imagination. In other ways we are just plain idiots.

Recently I watched Star Trek: Insurrection. In that movie there is a culture. This culture knows technology. Can understand it. Can create it. They choose not to. I choose that. The more I learn, acquire and use technology the less I like it. Nothing is quiet. Nothing is as it seems. Nowhere is dark anymore.

I also have a message for everyone who thinks I'm crazy...I don't care. Some people have actively told me I'm either nuts or are generalising. I don't care. I don't like the lifestyle we're expected to live. I don't believe in it. I am not naturally spiritual however I know one thing for sure. I'm not going to find what I'm looking for spiritually with music blaring, food oozing and technology invading.

When I read and knit I am given the head-space to contemplate and reflect. With all of those other things invading my life I don't get that. I just don't want the same things anymore. I think I would be much happier if I just moved to a farm somewhere quiet, away from the city and the people, and lived the way I believe in and trust me...if I could I would!

Moving...again!

Today, for the third time (although I count it as the fourth which I will explain later) in a year and a half , I finally finished moving, not the unpacking, the moving part. I've come to a conclusion. Moving and two story houses should be illegal.

Moving I've decided in fact is a form of abuse. Think I'm being melodramatic or exaggerating?? If you saw all my bruises, which make me look like I'm being abused, or felt my feet, shoulders, hips or knees you'd agree.

Moving alone is particularly sucky! This is the first time I've moved without any help at all. Although Admin did help me move three pieces of furniture it was only because they wouldn't fit in my car. One of the shelves is bigger than my car in fact. It doesn't count as help. Help would have been a trailer which didn't give me 10 more bruises. Help would have been someone turning up when they promised they would. Help would have been someone staying with me for another hour or two at least and help me carry bags of glass kitchen jars.

So I moved without help. Today I went for about 12 hours - 13 with an hour for lunch - and I didn't stop for two hours to read. I worked non stop, packing, unpacking, carrying, transporting....and I am EXHAUSTED! It is now 1am and I am more tired than I have ever been in my entire life. My knees, hips and feet are aching from carrying heavy things all day and today was not the only day I was moving. I've been moving for the last three days.

Moving is awful. I am not a stranger to moving house and I detest it more every time I do it. Moving takes something away each time. You live in a house (or room), you make it yours, you give the room/s a piece of your personality and you make it feel safe; a haven to escape to when life is hard. When you move you lose all of that. You lose the safe place and you lose a little piece of yourself.

To me moving crushes me a little each time. I have never, ever, in my entire life, moved out of choice. Every single time I have moved in my life it has been because of someone else. To be told to move I think is one of the worst things you can be told. You are being told that your safe place is no longer safe and that you must upend your life.

Now I'll explain the 3rd vs 4th time. I live at Uni. I move to uni, move no.1, I moved within Uni, move no.2, and I've moved again within Uni move no.3. However in the middle of that My mother moved, again. That means that as well as losing my safe room at Uni (twice!) I also lost my home. We stored everything so she could go off traveling. I don't begrudge her of that travel as she has wanted it for a long time, but I now feel effectively homeless. I would like to leave this Uni accommodation more than anything in the world but I cannot. I have no place to go.

I would not and could not ask my mother to stop traveling. It is not my right to do so. However I have an obsession with TV and it is difficult to watch Uni students going home, taking home their washing (which thanks to coin laundries I do but I do the washing not my mum!), and going to a place where they feel welcomed and safe. Uni accommodation I feel is anything but welcoming. It is impersonal, cold and cramped. And for some reason the place where I live does not provide a bookshelf or a desk with drawers. It is crazy because the two things we are expected to do is read and write.

I don't really have a point. I wish I did. At the moment I just feel extremely exhausted and frustrated. Plus I'm kind of lost. I'm back where I began; no closer to a place of my own I can make safe and stable. Stability is what I crave and I just hope that one day I have it. At the moment I feel like if there is a God he hates me! I hope he doesn't always hate me. I'd like to stay in the same house for more than 5 years - more than 10 years. That for me would be a dream come true.

Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares

I've been watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares recently. Not for the once-again-reality-TV show but for the hilarious, sad people who have no idea about what a good restaurant is. Tonight it's a guy who advertises wood burning pizza on his sign and then uses more prepackaged stuff than my nachos.
My nachos, a staple item in my diet is the best meal I've ever had. I make my own pasta sauce and so aside from the cheese and chips my nachos is the perfect meal. The pasta sauce (I don't use meat sauce cause I like it to be fast) is made of tomatoes, garlic, capsicum, fresh basil and a little olive oil. It's a perfect meal that is ready in less than 10 minutes and fills me up nicely.
I watch this show in stunned disbelief. My nachos has more flavour and nutritional benefit than what this guy is selling and it would probably sell better too. And what I find totally ironic is these people obviously call Gordon Ramsay in because they are going under financially and yet they don't see anything wrong with what they have been doing.
Newsflash...if nothing was wrong then you wouldn't be going under!
Seriously it stuns me that people are SO completely and totally ignorant about food. I reckon I could run a better restaurant than some of these people. I can't cook as quickly but I cook good food and nutritious food that isn't processed or that has gone bad.
I'll admit I don't like Gordon Ramsay much, he swears too much and I don't like his abusive style. However, having said that I don't doubt he knows how to cook and he clearly knows how to effectively run a restaurant.
You may have remembered my 11 tips for healthy eating and cooking. I stand by those. None of those were original ideas. Most of them I've picked up along the way and I try, although I don't always succeed, to follow them myself.
Personally I'm obsessive about food. I love cooking I LOVE eating and I could talk food and language all day. My friend is right I should become a chef but personally I feel that becoming a commercial Chef would take all the fun out of it for me. I like doing it for my and my family and friends. I'll stick with that, and I'll keep making my own pasta sauce. Preservatives should be reserved for chocolate and marshmallows...and if I could make those myself I would!