Why Do I Have to Be Mr Pink?

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Typical. I spend a few hours figuring out how to gerrymander blogger into hosting podcasts, and it turns out

(a) Google Video, which hosts Blogger Video, will cease accepting new uploads in a few months. This is because Google Video, like about fifty other google products, is being reduced with the workforce.

Sometimes the products are allowed to slowly die - often after they've been bought up with the original developers for millions of dollars. Sometimes they're abruptly discontinued, and sometimes as in this case they're just scaled down to something still useful but much less useful - a video search tool. A literal google for videos, in fact.

(b) OurMedia does it better anyway.

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Today's culinary adventure: Sheep offal bulked with oats and stuffed into the sheep's stomach, traditionally served with mashed up turnips and swede.

Haggis with neeps and tatties.

Once a year, English supermarkets stock these items in anticipation of Burns Night, which marks the birth (or it might be the death, or something else, no one I've asked is sure) of Robert Burns - prolific Scottish author of poems, all of which seem to have turned into songs.

Every country seems to have it's own variation on "the less appetising bits of an animal mashed up and baked with whatever vegetables grow locally". We've got shepherd's pie, I'm told Canadians have cowboy pie, and I've eaten (but been unable to pronounce) some east european variations.

I've decided I rather like haggis. But it won't be available for another year.

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There is a program called Driver Genius, which scans your computer for out-of-date drivers and downloads up-to-date replacements for them. Sound good? My advice is: Don't use it, ever.

I've tried it twice, and on both occasions the "new" drivers either didn't work at all, or seemed much earlier than the ones they replaced.

Just a small public service announcement.

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Last week I bought a pink computer.

My old laptop had (almost literally) exploded, and mother had lent me hers for a little while, so I could continue reading wikipedia, playing mp3s and, well, searching for a bargain on a new laptop.

And I did indeed find a reasonable bargain, with 12.1" screen, 4GB RAM, 2GB cache, 2.26GHz dual core processor, N-type wireless compatibility, 250GB SATA drive, and other good things understood only by people who spend far too much time sitting at computers, reading about computers.

Plus, I could get it for twenty three pounds less...if I got the version in pink. And it was very pink. Pinker than a gay triangle, pinker than the girlband Pink, pinker than cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker - who isn't actually very pink at all.

Except after a week it still hasn't been built. So I phoned up and enquired. It seems the pink version - sorry, the pink version - had been discontinued. Without anyone telling the sales department or website maintainer - or indeed me.

Sigh. So I cancel the order, and set about choosing a new one. And what should I find but a nice black laptop with about the same specs...for a hundred and fifty pounds less!

So this is me, happily shacked up with a cool, dark, spiffy new boyf...computer. In the pink, indeed.

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