i had some trouble with my desktop PC.

my alphasmart portable word-processing device decided to stop transferring files to my PC.

i started craving the convenience and flexibility of a laptop.

i earned some money.

i found out laptops were tax deductible.

i saw some special offers on laptops.

i started reading martha beck’s 4-day win (thanks for the tip, keris - it’s great!) and bought into her concept of small and large rewards.

i set myself a goal: to do an awareness meditation for 5 minutes every day, for 4 days straight.

i successfully completed my goal.

can you guess what i bought last night?

if you can’t, you must be even more dazed and confused than i feel after working almost all weekend… when i can think in paragraphs again i’ll fill you in on my university interview: hopefully soon.

oh, this is truly exciting! remember that really exciting and mysterious new tech blogging gig i told you about, ooh… four days ago?

well today i make my debut *squee!* on fabulous american site popgadget. i’ll be contributing 4-5 posts a week, so i hope you’ll stop by regularly. (i’m not just saying that because i write for it now: it’s one of those sites that’s so cool i’d get a lump of jealousy in my throat when reading it. it’s a great site with or without me… but i’m glad it’s with. hee).

anyway, see me talk about the cutest magnets ev-ah here.

*squee!*

i know i was (am?) having a hiatus (i’m still feeling a bit rough to be honest, also: grumpy) but the site wasn’t supposed to totally freaking disappear!

after two days, i got in touch with my blog host, and it transpired they had changed some of their settings (why? why?) and made my blog go ‘way as a result.

so i had to go and change my settings with the company i bought dianeshipley.com from, where it was a dark world of ‘nameserver this’ and ‘DNS settings that’ and ‘this is not the email address you registered with’ and ‘please log in again’ until i nearly tore my hair out.

but i made it back!

and if you missed it, while the site was down i got another blasting in wrote another piece for the guardian: don’t bite the hand that feeds the inner you.

is there a good self-help book for dealing with criticism and blog disappearances, do you know?

my favourite spam (note how polite it is, especially considering what it’s selling) - plus, in italics, the response i’d like to send. (if i replied to spam, which you never, ever, should, boys & girls!)

Hi dianechitticks, love my new nickname! working hard? how did you know?

The answer is quite clear. You re overworked, man, I can tell! But chill out, there s plenty of people just like you. phew! 

Do you know that an immense grow of people suffering from a sexual disorder is observed, the number of people JUST LIKE YOU is nightmarishly huge. a number of people JUST LIKE ME would be nightmarishly huge, you’re right! but let’s just stop and look back at that grammar, shall we? - wow. i recommend david crystal’s book ‘rediscover grammar’, it’s helped an immense grow of people.

Questioned? - this is the kind of thing david crystal can help you with. one word does not a sentence make. you mean to say: ‘don’t believe me?’

It s the price for the life you lead. YOU ARE TO EARN THE MONEY. i am?

The whole money making process is all yours. woo-hoo!

What did you think you d gonna get? - i dunno, an apostrophe perhaps?

To sum it up? Too tired to go on. i really am!

You re now experiencing your sexual engine failure. oh no. 

No wonder your lady is pissed off , your girlfriend is on her way to pack up her stuff and get off. - so i have a girlfriend and a lady, or are they one and the same?

But what would you say if I tell you that. full stop in the wrong place, dude.

I can lend a hand. no pun intended? ha ha ha 

Be your self medicator, feel different, feel you FANCY THAT and YOU CAN. i fancy what and can what? 

And WE LL ENCOURAGE. i bet you will. i just don’t know what you’re talking about.  » more…

shame on me. shame!

using my always brilliant trend predictor skillz, i declared that i would never partake of video podcasts.

the fun of podcasts, i self-righteously asserted, was that you could listen to them with your eyes closed. it was radio reborn, not (sneery sneer) amateur tv.

one woman changed my mind.

that woman, ladies and gentlemen, is cali lewis.

» more…

happy blogaversary to me, happy blogaversary to MEEEEEEEE!

yes, two years ago today i became a blogger. since then i’ve co-edited a books blog, written about blogging for online magazines, women’s weeklies and national newspapers and contributed to many many many blogs in a professional capacity, causing controversy on the guardian blog in my first post out of the blocks!

who would have thought? (clue: not me.)

as i said on this day in 2006:

this time last year, i wasn’t convinced i could sustain more than a very irregularly contributed-to blog… shows what i know!

look out for two more blogaversay posts later today (aren’t you lucky!)

and answer me this: how long have you been blogging for? and if you don’t, why not?

don’t you love it when you work on a piece for a new market you’re hoping to crack and at first they’re kind of interested but then it goes totally unacknowledged and completely unwanted so that months and months and months and months later you finally realise it ain’t never gonna be published? no? me neither. it does give me blog material though, so here is one such piece for your delectation: enjoy/feel a bit sorry for me after you’ve read it!

The Tyranny of Top-Up TV

Who decides what you watch on TV? Your kids, your partner, maybe even (lucky!) you?

In my house an inanimate object is all-powerful: the Top Up TV box, designed to provide digital TV and “the best of satellite” in one affordable package, runs rampant. It deletes programmes it deems unsuitable, chooses not to record those it despises and always sends cheerful messages asking me to confirm that the changes it’s made to my viewing plans are ‘OK’. Where’s the option that says ‘No, it’s most definitely NOT OK, you’re really pushing your luck!’?

This small black box has big ideas. It’s too good for reality TV: during every episode of The Apprentice it froze for at least two minutes, always at the moment of maximum tension. And Any Dream Will Do? sent it into sputters of righteous indignation. Not once in three months would Top Up TV record this programme, despite being instructed and even begged to do so. More frustrating than not recording a show at all are the times the box plays the cruel trick of recording for a cursory seven minutes before turning itself off. Or records a programme in full but won’t permit it to play. And if I see another flashing message about a programme being declared corrupt “on boot”, my boot will be flying through the TV screen.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this… Top Up TV’s website promised lots of wonderful things, some of which are actually true: for £9.99 a month a selection of satellite TV programmes is downloaded while I sleep. Too bad a disproportionate number of them are about fishing and that series can’t be guaranteed to be in order. I can easily record from any digital channel (when the recorder lets me) and pause live TV for half an hour at a time. The machine’s cheaper than its competitors and can go days without a major problem and sometimes several minutes without a minor one, like needing to flash on and off repeatedly. Plus, I never need buy a TV guide now thanks to the fourteen-day on-screen schedule.

But my TV watching has never been so unpredictable. Not only don’t I know if this box will ever actually follow its instructions, I can’t predict when it will switch itself off and refuse to come back on. Perhaps this could become a new spectator sport: extreme TV.

In my attempts to understand this strange behaviour, I have entertained the thought that my Top Up TV is really a Buddhist sage in digital disguise: teaching me the importance of non-attachment by refusing to record those programmes I’m looking forward to most. Either that or I’m living inside a crazy reality show in which the first Top Up TV box to drive its owner to a nervous breakdown wins.

Mine could definitely be a contender.