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Samhain 2012

By Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, PaganismNo Comments

This year Samhain was a two day event! It started on Tuesday (30th) night when Sye and I carved pumpkins (for how to carve pumpkins see Making a pumpkin lantern for Samhain). Here’a our finished pumpkins:



Left: Jill – looking shocked (mine),
Right: Jacko Sye’s piece of artwork.
(Click on image for full size.)

Sye & I also used the pumpkin insides to make some Pumpkin Cookies after I found a recipe on the Facebook of Pagan Magic, here’s a photo of the cookies:



They look fantastic and were so delicious.
(Click on image for full size.)

Sye & I had a cookie (or two), a brew (or Milk in Sye’s case) and I wished him happy Samhain as by the time we’d finished it was the early hours of the morning.

In the evening of Samhain (31st) I went round to do ritual with Jayne & Joan. We wrote letters to ancestors which was a brilliant idea of Jayne’s that I have never thought of doing. Then we burned the letters to release the messages into the cosmos in Jayne’s fire pit:



The Fire Pit lit, despite the rain.
We even had some green flames,
I’ve only ever seen them on Samhain.
(Click on image for full size.)



Me tending to the fire in my ritual robe.
(Click on image for full size.)

By the fire we discussed what we were thankful for over the last twelve months; we also burnt slips of paper with things we wanted to banish over the next twelve months. To finish the ritual we went inside, relaxed and asked any spirits that wish to communicate with us to do so. I didn’t get any spirit communication unless you count the cat that uncharacteristically came up to me and started purring.

That’s how I celebrated Samhain.

Write soon,

Antony

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Sunday 4 November 2012

A Catch-Up

By Friends & Family, Life, TechnologyNo Comments

Hi all,

I really haven’t had chance to blog recently, so I just thought we would have a general catch-up. So what’s new? Well…

I’ve fully transferred my website to a new hosting provider (see Transfer of Hosting). The main technical glitch was many of the images not showing up. I’ve manually fixed every page and every blog post so they should all be working now. But if by chance you stumble upon a broken image link, copy the address bar in your browser, paste it into the message body on the Contact page and click send. Then I’ll know where the problem is and I can get it fixed.

I’ve had a spell of ill health in the form of lower back pain (see Ouch…Severe Lower Back Pain), but apart from the odd painful twinges here and there I’m now feeling much better.

My good friend Sye is back from Uni and has temporarily come to live with me. It’s great to have him here, he’s good company, I feel happy being able to support him. He knows he is welcome to stay for as long as he needs too.

Sye’s also been a huge support to me in a difficult week I’ve had recently. The reason for the difficult week was financial pressures, Sye was my listening ear (along with a few other people close to me) and has given me some good advice. I discovered I have a leaking pipe under my floor, need to replace the two front tyres on my car and have had some hassle of my buildings management company.

I’ve been to my friend Steve’s graduation-from-Uni meal. It was delicious food in the Hilton in Manchester. Unfortunately I only managed to sit through the meal due to my back pain but I still enjoyed the night out.

I’ve caught up with Simon & Chrys at a recent Food & Fire Evening at Chrys’ house. It was lovely, relaxed and social, just what I needed.

I’ve also been reading Pure by Julianna Baggott which is a post-apocalyptic story about two young people whose worlds collide. Pressia a wretch in a world with deformed people and animals after the detonations and Partridge a Pure from the Dome that was protected from the detonations. It’s a trilogy with the next book out next year and the final book out the year after. It’s a fascinating read and will review it after I’ve read it.

I’ve downloaded OS X Mountain Lion. One of the reviews in the Mac App Store described it as an evolution of OSX Lion rather than a revolution. This review is right, they’ve built on OSX Lion rather than a complete redesign like Windows does. OSX Mountain Lion feels more streamlined, the iMac boots up faster and complete operations with more speed. It seems to just work, it has fixed my sound issues (see Intermittent Sound Problems on the iMac) and has a few cool new features.

The first feature I love is Siri. It’s current use is as an dictation App, but in the future it is likely to be utilitised for starting Apps, putting reminders in iCal and other functions like the Iphone 4S. I think it’s very clever how it learns your voice characteristics and uses this learning to improve the dictation. I like the Notification Centre but it doesn’t work as I’d like. For example, my new emails don’t appear in the Notification Centre like on my Iphone 4. The share button in Apps is useful and being able to post Twitter updates from my desktop makes life easier. But I was disappointed that Facebook integration is only coming in Autumn as this was one of the features I updated for.

That’s about all I’ve been up to. However I’ve got a few events here and there, working on some creative projects I hope to share with you soon and am coming up with some good ideas for thought provoking blog posts.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Thursday 9 August 2012

Intermittent Sound Problems on the iMac

By TechnologyNo Comments

Between Christmas and New Year I splashed out on a iMac (see iMac Part 1 – The Decision to Buy, Ordering & Delivery & iMac Part 2 – From Windows to Mac: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly). My 27″ iMac with it’s high quality screen resolution has replaced my TV & DVD player, and has become my music system, game station and photo albums. It’s become my connection to the world through the Internet and one of the primary ways I get in touch with family and friends (through Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, etc.).

So I was disappointed to start having intermittent sound problems with my iMac. Sometimes when I switched it on, it would chime and then load up as usual. Then I’d log in and then see this:

I’d go into my System Preferences and see this:

When it had this sound problem it wouldn’t play music or movies and sometimes would boot up in Safe Mode. Restarting the iMac usually resolved the issue, but considering how much I paid for the iMac I wasn’t happy with this intermittent sound issue.So I decided that while it’s still under warranty to get it looked at by Apple.

I took screen shots and rang Apple. No queues to speak to someone, friendly and helpful staff. I arranged an appointment to take my iMac to my local Apple Store.

On the day of my appointment I arrived at my local Apple Store, dragging my heavy iMac in behind me. I was about an hour early because the appointment was at a peak travel time. They let me drop it off, do a bit of shopping and come back to the store for my appointment. I saw an Apple Genius Technician who plugged my iMac into a server and checked the hardware. No problems found.

The Genius Technician said if it was a hardware problem I’d have no sound, rather than the problem being intermittent. He said it was probably a software issue. He showed me how to reinstall OS X Lion. You do this by holding down the ALT key when you first switch the iMac on. The great thing about reinstalling Lion is that you don’t loose any of your files or settings (like you would on Windows).

I believe the Genius Technician, after-all he’s the Apple expert. But I remember having an intermittent sound issue with a Window’s PC and that was because of a loose connection on the motherboard.

So I’ve now reinstalled OS X Lion and will just have to keep an eye out to see if my intermittent sound issue returns.

Write soon,

Antony

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I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Thursday 21 June 2012

Flirting

By Love & Relationships, ThinkingOne Comment

To me flirting is a subtle art of both verbal and non verbal communication. Usually I flirt with straight women as it’s safe, or when I’m after something (a favour from a friend or work colleague).

Recently I’ve had two men who’ve caught my eye and so I’ve flirted with them. The problem is: when I like a guy I’m not so subtle.

So I got some flirting practice in with these two guys. It didn’t matter as I knew both guys weren’t right for me. The Fascinating Man has a partner & foster kids and the second man was too young.

But during flirting I realised that if it’s through Facebook messaging or the like – you completely loose the tone of voice and body language. This making subtle flirting even more difficult.

I can be Subtle, but it seems I still need to work on being subtle with men I like.

Write soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Monday 21 May 2012
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