Monthly Archives: September 2007

You Give Lard A Bad Name

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According to some new statistics, Scotland is now the second fattest nation in the world behind the USA.

All I can say to our friends across the pond is… watch out. We have the deep-fried pizzas and Mars Bars and we're not afraid to use them. The coveted Number One spot shall be ours some day.

In other news, after six weeks of swearing and tinkering I've managed to convert this stinking blog to the MT4 templates. And for all that effort all I give you is… exactly the same bloody template you've been staring at since 2002. At least now there's no tables!

There are bugs here and there that I need to iron out but THE COMMENTS ARE WORKING NOW hurrah hurrah hurrah. Proper entry soon but for now I'm away to my bed.

Be Proud of Your Teeth

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The seaside town of Arbroath is famous for many reasons:

  • For the Declaration of Arbroath
  • For its beautiful and incredibly history-riddled ye olde Abbey
  • For being the home of the Arbroath Smokie, a tasty smoked fish that has Protected Designation of Origin status (just like Champagne, Parmesan and Newcastle Brown Ale) and its very own tartan!
  • For being the toon where Mothership-in-law Mary is from!

When visiting Arbroath recently I found the above was the mere tip of the tourist iceberg. There was so much more to see, like the sandwich shop called Goodfillaz and the Macdougall Dentist Surgery:

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We wandered round the town admiring the buildings, many of which were made from local red sandstone. Behind the Abbey was a bustling red sandstone bowling club.

"I cannae wait to be old," Gareth said almost wistfully as we peered through the fence, "I'm totally going to bowl. Grey trousers and everything."

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I took a few photos of the Abbey itself but didn't go inside. It was £4.50 to get in and we only had a tenner on us. If we went into the Abbey we wouldn't have had any money for dinner. When choosing between stomach and brain there can only be one winner.

To me the jewel in the Arbroathian (?) crown was Peppo's fish shop. In my humble and gluttonous opinion it just may contain Scotland's deep-fried Holy Grail – the Best Fish Supper in the land! In my 4.5 years over here there have been two major contenders – the famous Anstruther Fish Bar (as graced by Tom Hanks and Prince William) and the fanbloodybrilliant Ben Ledi Cafe in Callander, but I think Peppo's has the edge. Long-term lurkers may recall I moonlighted as a fish and chip shop lass during university, so whenever we're in line at a chippie I can't help provide Gareth with annoying commentary and analysis on their business practices.

  • There were good signs right from the start – a queue of pensioners halfway down the block waiting for the place to open, and a gang of seagulls loitering across the street. If anyone knows good chips, it's pensioners and seagulls.
  • When the doors opened the two charming fellas behind the counter greeted customers by name (except us two strangers, of course)
  • There were framed poems on the wall written by satisfied customers. Poems with a dozen stanzas! Now that's devotion.
  • Everything was cooked to order. Big deal! you may say, but in sooo many places over here the goods sit in a warmer getting all soggy then get resuscitated in the fryer upon purchase.
  • Most places cook chips by putting them into a basket, then lowering the basket into the oil. These chips were free range! The basket was tipped out into the fryer so they could swim about, instead of being squashed up in their metal cage. They splashed and dove then fished out once they'd floated back to the top, all crispy and perfect.
  • Once the fish came out of the fryer they stood each piece up vertically for a couple of minutes to let the excess oil drain. Such innovation!

It was bloody delicious too. Clean light crispy batter on succulent fish and chips that seemed the marry the best of Australian and Scottish chips – crisp on the outside but tender in the middle. Hubba hubba!

Fish supper at Arbroath

Crazy Buses of Europe

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In the tradition of Abandoned Gloves of Scotland, I present another of my failed photo gallery projects today – Crazy Buses of Europe.

It all began in 2003 when Rhi and I embarked on our first continental jaunt, to Paris. We went out to Versailles and instead of being awed by the honking huge palace I was awed by the squadrons of tour coaches parked out the front. They were bold and daggy like 80s album covers, with senior citizens gently tumbling out their doors.

But as we ventured further I soon realised that pretty much all buses look crazy in Europe, so I abandoned my mission.

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Palace of Versailles, 2003.

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Edinburgh Tattoo, August 2003

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Copenhagen, June 2004

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John o Groats, July 2004

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St Petersburg, June 2004

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Druskininkai, Lithuania, September 2004

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Stockholm, June 2004

The Stinky Stench of Defeat

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I have been using Movable Type since 2001. My good friend Daniel installed it on my server waaay back in the beta beginning when there was Ben and Mena in their living room and a handful of other testers. And I have remained faithful and devoted ever since, through thick and thin and Trackback spam.

But now with MT4 I just want to curl up and howl and wave the white flag. My host upgraded me a few weeks ago and everything seemed fine; I was loving the sexy new interface. Now I've got all these Server 500 errors with the comments and I have no idea why. It was working fine after the upgrade and then suddenly it wasn't.

(On that topic – if you leave a comment, you'll get the Error page, but your comment will be received by the database. It's just not publishing it or sending me the notification email. I can manually publish your comments later on though, so by all means, please say hello!)

I've been looking at new default templates and after years of bumbling and bluffing my way through the Land of MT I think I've finally reached the limit of my technical abilities. I just cannot wrap my head around these new templates; all the includes and widgets and nested whatnots. I thought I could swap my blog to the default templates and just tweak it to look like my current template – chuck in a banner image, throw in my sidebar info, fiddle with the fonts and colours. But I just cannae figure it out at all.

I created a dummy blog and imported my archives and then I got stuck. Everything seems so much more complicated now with a bazillion more files to edit. Where is the default stylesheet hiding? Which file do I need for the sidebar? How do I get this category pagination thing to work? And why have my old entries lost their SmartyPants formatting, curly quotes, etc?

I've looked online for some sort of template guidance to no avail – I remember when MT3 came out some lovely person did a great guide to disecting all the new templates for idiots. I'm crossing my fingers that an equally kind and brainy soul feels compelled to do this for MT4. Or… maybe everyone else has found the transition a walk in the park and the simple diagnosis is:  I'M A MORON.

For now my options are stay stuck with broken comments or whack up the boring default templates without any of my customisations, unless I miraculously become clever and/or blessed with ten gallons of spare time overnight. I couldn't be arsed switching to WordPress; it took me six years to feign a basic level of competence with MT. I just want to write stupid entries and chitty chat with the commenters and not think about the geeky stuff. Blah.

Scotland the Braw

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NOTE:
Sorry about the Internal Server Errors. I have no idea why this is happening and will try to fix soon! Comments are being received by MT, just not published to the blog.

Last weekend Dr G and I stayed in these rockin' wigwams with a bunch of mates. After stuffing ourselves stupid with barbequed vegetarian sausages on bread rolls we all went for a walk to Tyndrum. Here we are clomping back through all the heather with Ben More and Stob Binnein glowering down at us.

The view at Tyndrum

The only thing that spoiled the weekend was when a pack of BASTARDS stole five of Dr G's beers from the communal fridge. That was NOT in the Spirit of the Wigwam!