I'm sorry, Avatar!

I loved the film Avatar but I thought that it was rather spoilt by the choice of the name "unobtainium" for the mineral that was so precious to Earth but perhaps I was being rather hard on the film makers because did you know that element #118 in the periodic table has been given the (temporary) name "ununoctium"? That's not a million miles away from unobtainium, is it, so maybe I should let the film directors off the hook.

As to how I found out about ununoctium, well I came across these wonderful chopping boards on BoingBoing and you can customise the final element which just happens to be ununoctium. If P&P from the US was less exorbitant I'd be very tempted.

On the first day of Nano

I've written 2000 words.

It always surprises me how tired I feel afterwards! I need to write 1786 words a day if I want to get to 50k by the end of November, allowing for two days off. Because I do have a life, and I've got a brilliant day of skating and Christmas treats planned thanks to where my Beloved works.

The first day or so is usually the easiest as I use up all the story I've already worked out. I wonder how long it will be till I run out.

Dear Google

Dear Google,

I used to be one of your biggest fans. When Google first appeared I quickly caught on that it was better than AltaVista and Lycos and DogPile. My website even touted Google as "possibly the best search engine in the world." Heady days.

Then Gmail came along and I signed up straight away, lured by the carrot of "never delete anything ever again". Of course, that turned out to be a rash promise and I'm using up space quicker than it's growing but hey! Who'd have guessed it would take off so well?

But now. Now. Now the unspeakable has happened. You've changed me over to the new look Gmail against my will and there's nothing I can do. And it's missing a scroll arrow!

I know it's the fashion to get rid of the bottom arrow on the vertical scroll bar but I use it all the time. And now it's gone. RIP scrollbar arrow; you will be greatly missed.

Whatever happened to "don't be a jerk"?

The end of an era

I've given up on Google Reader. I've had it on my iGoogle page for a long time and it's been very convenient to turn to when I want to catch up on all you lovely bloggers but it has one major flaw. You can't unsubscribe from anything.

Some time ago I decided to stop following Cake Wrecks and I unsubscribed in my Google Reader. A few days later Cake Wrecks was back with forty odd posts marked as unread. I deleted it from the reader. It came back. I unsubcribed in my Bloglist. It came back. I googled for a solution. There isn't one. Not one that works anyway.

So now I'm using BlogBridge. I'm hoping it will do what I tell it to and not decide for me that I really, really never want to unsubscribe from anything I've ever wanted to read in the past. Goodbye Google Reader!

Search engine

Thank to AnaG I've found a new search engine that claims to pay you for searching. Whether that works or not I have no idea but there are other interesting features such as being able to vote on and comment on the links that come up.

It relies on Google, MSN, and Yahoo results and you can choose what weight is given to each. If you want to go and look at it, it is called Scour and I'll be interested to hear what you think about it. (The link is a referral link so I get credit for your searches. If you want a clean link it's www.scour.com)