FYI: New blog

As I'm sure you'll soon realise when looking at the post dates for the posts below, this blog is dead. It was never really alive to be honest, because I just didn't have the time or the writing ability to write anything near fit for human consumption. But now, I kinda can, so I've started a new blog, with promises of better writing than anything you read here :)

You can find it at:
Mayebejames.tumblr.com

Thanks for reading,
James

School ramblings

OK, just to keep y'all up to date on the school info:

I'm starting the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award now in school which will mean an hour of learning Mandarin on Rosetta stone each week, an hour of physical exercise and map reading/volunteering work also.

Mr Baptiste, my old English teacher is setting up a school paper, which should hopefully be starting in the next few weeks.

I have a chamber concert in the symphony hall on the 27th, where me and the 7 other saxophones in the band are playing Doctor Who and Welcome Dance.

I'm in the top 10% of the school academically, so I'll be having meetings with some teacher or other soon about that.

Snow day-Wednesday

At about 11pm Tuesday night, my mum got a text from school saying that school was off next day.
She woke me up to tell me this, meaning that in the morning the only reason I got up moderately early (around 8am, which is when i usually leave the house) was only because my sister was screaming at the fact she had had to go to school, and I wanted to take pictures of the snow before any cars drove on my road.

Later on (about 9.30) I decided to play outside, but was forbiden to play in the back garden so as to leave it for my sister. I then spent several happy hours rolling a snowball up and down the cul-de-sac collecting up snow until it came to about my stumach, at which point it got stuck 3 on the path in front of my neihour's neihbour's house, blocking the path of the car which needed to get into the drive.

After about 10 minutes of sitting in his car laughing at me, my neihbour came out and helped me roll the damned thing back to my house, where it sat scowling at me (I swear it had a face)

Several hours, many curses at the breaking of snow and snowballs in the face later, and I now have a decent snowman of my size.

I have enjoyed coming home from school since then, as I always seem to get caught behind some excitable children, who always spend several minutes outside my house playing by the snowman.
Christmas really is magical, it just came 2 weeks late :)

testing:1,2,3....

I am adding extrabody fonts into my blog via the css style sheet as seen at http://bloggeruniversity.blogspot.com/2008/01/choices-for-post-body-fonts.html

RSS Awareness day.

Thank you very much to Annie at http://bloggeruniversity.blogspot.com for this informative post, my current template, and much advise garnered from her posts.

I feel that RSS is a sweet mystery of the universe. Or at least of the wide world web. I'm going to break it down in easy to understand terms for everyone that ever wondered "What is RSS?" or "Do I need RSS?"

To begin with what does the RSS stand for? According to Wikipedia, it means Really Simple Syndication. So, my question is, why does it seem not so simple? I've done some investigating, and as it turns out, it is simple!!

Here is the breakdown. We all have favorite blogs and websites that we read. But, as time goes on, the list gets longer and longer. How do you keep up with the newest posts on your favorite sites? Do you click individually on each site everyday? That could really be time consuming, so you check occasionally. Not a real efficient method.

RSS steps up to save the day...efficiency at it's best. With RSS, you can subscribe to your favorite blogs and websites and when that site is updated, a headline or summary is sent to your reader. (More about readers in a moment.) How do you subscribe? It is as simple as a click away. Most blogs and websites make it very easy for you to subscribe to their RSS feed by having the icon in a prominent place on their site. You will see a little orange icon that is the standard symbol for RSS. Occasionally the symbol will be a different color or configured different. But, if you look carefully, you will recognize it. To subscribe to that blog, just click on the RSS icon. Then, when that blog has a new post or that website has new content, you will be notified via your reader.

In the RSS world there are two players. The feed and the reader. The feed concerns the owner of the blog or website, and they configure their feed for their site. (A future post on setting up a feed is in the process...subscribe to my RSS feed to find out when!) The reader is what you will need to receive their feed. It is your mailbox for your subscriptions. Here is a list to get you started:

1. Google Reader (which is what I use)
2. Bloglines
3. Pageflakes
   
4. MyYahoo

After you get a reader, check it daily and you will see the updates of your favorite sites. This is much easier than running all over the internet checking for new content. Since I use Google Reader, it is displayed on my homepage, iGoogle, every time I get on the computer. Nothing could be easier.

Let Sleeping dogs lie..

This is an old poem I found in some charred-remains of a journal in my drawer.
It's not bad in that it rhymes and still makes sense, which is an accomplishment for me, since near enough all my poems are non-rhyming.

Let that sleeping dog lie
If you don't want to die.
Please, I beg you,
Let that sleeping dog lie

Why, Don't you see?
Those fangs come up to your knee.
So please,
Heed my plea.

No! Don't go an stroke him!
I don't want to put you in a coffin!
That dog's a danger,
He is fuelled by Sin.

what do you all think?

Some astonishingly brilliant quotes from Mark Twain.

"Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."
- Mark Twain

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."
-Mark Twain