Let us begin
My original idea of printing out the pages of my old site to pdf’s didn’t work. The html didn’t translate very well. It wanted to break pages in bad places, for example. I had a workaround, but…look, it just didn’t work, okay?
I think the thing to do is dump the whole site into an area on this site. For now, I’ll link to individual articles. Later, I’ll fix the functionality the connects them.
Simply put, the “home” links don’t work yet. Let me know if anything else goes wrong.
Don’t worry. Just click.
I actually owned the lab coat in the graphic. You can’t tell, because weasels don’t have shoulders, but it was a proper mad scientist’s coat. Probably Fifties? It was a heavy, heavy cotton with little steel buttons that marched across the shoulder and down the side. And it fit! I loved that thing.
Our first experiment offers the cat raw meat and cooked meat to see which one she prefers. The answer surprised me.
Hell yes that’s clickbait. And do please click the graphic with the Zippo lighter. It’s a scrap of javascript and I was very proud of myself.
May 3, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 4
Science!
The first section of my old site was called Doktor Auntie Weasel’s Laboratory and it was essays on science. This was the header graphic (but in color. I think this one was animated.)
The machine is based on a snapshot of real object I owned. It was an early model Relax-A-Cizor, an item that was banned so hard in 1970, they were ordered to be collected and destroyed. You couldn’t even legally sell one used.
It’s a terrifying device – you attach probes to your body and it electrically stimulates your muscles for you. The electrodes were fabric pads that you wetted before use. Yes, I tried it. If they dried out or you placed them wrong, it hurt like a bastard.
If you placed them right, your muscles jerked like that decapitated frog from High School science class. Please tell me you had that class.
I paid $10 for it at a junk shop in Pawtucket and it was pristine. It had all its bits, including the instruction manual. I was awed by it and I’m not sure how I got rid of it in the end. It might be upstairs.
I’ll pick an item from this section for tomorrow.
May 2, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 6
Before I had a blog
Before I had a blog, I had a website. It was a series of medium-form essays on a bunch of different subjects arranged in topical…piles? I had a ball with the graphics and the coding. The writing was, as writing always is, a pain in the tail.
There were, like, twenty different front page graphics and you’d get a random one each time (two pictured above). When you moused over one thing, something on the other side of the page would light up. It was all stupid fun, but it pleased me. I crack me up.
It ran from 2003 to 2006, so the graphics were small and/or low resolution – we were all painfully conscious of download times in the Oughties (I still instinctively am). But, on the whole, it held up pretty well.
One day, somehow, domain scalpers stole the address. I’m still not sure how that happened. I must have missed a renewal notice or three.
And that was the end of that.
To be honest, I was relieved. It was ass-ache and I was then right at the beginning of my trans-Atlantic relocation. I was whelmed. I was too ignorant to be overwhelmed yet.
Zo! I thought it would be fun to reprint some the old stuff, probably as links to pdf files so the formatting holds. None of it has been archived anywhere, as far as I know. Long-time readers will recall that my birthday is in early May and I bug out for the first week or so of the month.
Have some vintage weasel and consider me bugged.
May 1, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 2
Old faithful
This lightbulb has burned continuously in a fire station in Livermore, California since 1901. Not the same fire station, and it’s been off a few times for power outages and moving fire station. It is a handblown bulb with carbon filament, invented by Adolphe A. Chaillet.
When first manufactured, it burned at 60 watts. It is now 4. I know the feeling.
It has a website that hasn’t been updated since 2015, and boy does it look like it. The webcam is no longer operational, but the AI who lives in my browser says it’s still burning. Wikipedia seems to agree.
It is open to the public.
And with that, weasel doth vamoose. I’ve just been reminded my art club newsletter should go out Wednesday.
April 29, 2024 — 6:59 pm
Comments: 4
The ones that don’t land
I have an Early Bird Special story. When I was working corporate in the States, there was a shopping center next door that had various eateries and office supply stores. That kind of thing. It had a restaurant popular with the Early Bird Special crowd and we were accustomed to see it lit up with wrinklies first thing in the morning.
I’d gone over for…staples or some shit before work and I was walking back across this very parking lot. Wearing my novelty CORONER t-shirt.
Oh, dear. I was approached by a small group of tiny nervous grandmas and asked if there was a problem. TBH, I felt genuinely shit about it and never wore that shirt again. The things you think are funny when you’re 25.
I’m sure there’s AI that will be able to identify this parking lot in the next six months. I had a real Google Maps adventure finding it myself. Dumber than AI, me.
It seems as though my old company has sold off quite a lot of what used to be a big campus. I know they’re not hurting for money so it must be a strategic financial decision.
Another evening lost exploring Google Maps. It’s even more fun in VR!
Oh, yeah – our internet is fixed.
April 23, 2024 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 4
She took her time, didn’t she?
Okay, I can put up with thirty years of it, but after that? I am done!
Actually, I think most of those advice letters are fake. At least, the ones in porn magazines are – I know somebody who used to write them.
Meanwhile, they tell us it could be Thursday before our internet is back. Because they have to use a cherry picker on a busy road, they have to do a survey first. I think it has to do with who controls the road (the county council or the Highways Agency). I am unclear.
All’s I know is, my YouTube addiction is on hold while we pay per byte. Good weekend, everyone!
April 19, 2024 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 6
Help a weasel out
I have reached a state of spiritual purity: I no longer desire material things. This is a problem because my birthday is next month and Uncle B is pestering me for ideas.
There’s nothing big I want and anything small I want I buy as I go, so it will have to be something novel. Bought any interesting knick-knacks or gadgets lately? Nothing too dear, please.
I did the first mow of 2024 this morning. The grass was way too wet and I kept having to pull wads of clogged vegetation from under the blades in a process that gives me the willies, safety release or no safety release. But it is done.
And this little puffball snoozed through it on the other side of the fence. Not so the chickens, who know for a fact lawn mowers are the very devil and the only way to ward him off is to scream and run in circles.
It still knocks me out that I can see behbeh sheep from my lawn chair.
April 10, 2024 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 8
Is it over? Did you die?
From this side of the pond, it looked like everyone in America was running in circles quacking. Why the overreaction – anyone know? Or was the news deceiving us again?
Photo from NASA.
Yesterday, we had a bumble bee stuck in Uncle B’s greenhouse. We like bees and we’re always being told how endangered they are. We had to try to free him.
Problem was, he’d gotten himself stuck under the bubble wrap that serves as insulation and it was going to be tricky to free safely (female bumblebees can sting, though rarely, the internet tells me).
I know, a soup ladle!
There I am, skipping around the greenhouse trying to scoop up a bee with a silver ladle without breaking any glass and I thought, “I don’t even know why I’m playing the Hogwarts game.”
April 8, 2024 — 6:42 pm
Comments: 11
My TV has a [Magic Explorer] button, y’all
But only when the pointer color is changed to purple, I guess. Another learning curve. Swell.
We got a new TV today. Our old Sony was rock solid, but it was 15 years old – right at the dawn of the smart TV era. It was kinda dumb. We saw an OLED running in a shop and thought…yes, please.
This somehow has a bigger screen with a smaller footprint (the Sony had a thick frame around the outside). It weighs about a third what the old one did and costs £0.19 a year to run all the time on standby.
We spent the afternoon watching 4K videos of cats and forests. Whee!
Have a good weekend. Any smart TV tips?
April 5, 2024 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 10
But I could if I wanted to
It blows me away what you can buy here. These four 18th C glass goblets have come up to auction for guide price, left to right, £300 – £500, £100 – £200, £50 – £100 and £500 – £1000. The engraved ones are naturally worth more because each is a unique work of art.
I can’t say I was even aware of 18th C glass before I moved here, but I’ve developed a real taste for it. Not sure why. If I bought these, I’d only contribute to their rarity by breaking them. I am a very clumsy woman. But it doesn’t mean I can’t window shop.
These four auction lots start here, if you’d like to see them big. Plenty of other things to enjoy in that auction too, if you poke around.
Me, I’ve been fighting technology all. day. long. I am exhaust.
April 4, 2024 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 5