I remember the first time that I was caught out, asked whether I wanted not to install Ask Jeeves. “Why not?”, I thought. “It could be useful.” So I didn’t uncheck the box.

When I started up Firefox, I realised that there had been a problem. Where there once was a Google search box, there was now Ask Jeeves. Indeed, I’m not the only one to get caught out. I used to work in an office where we would sometimes swap workstations, and somebody had inadvenently seen to it that a few of the machines were bedecked with pointless Yahoo paraphernalia. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the rights to remove programs at work.

Double unfortunately, we weren’t supposed to be able to download executable files either, so we couldn’t ask for the IT department to help us, since we’d then have had to explain how we circumvented their procedures to install Firefox in the first place. (The answer was to download the set-up files, bring them to work on a memory stick, then transfer them to publicly viewable files so that we could set up Firefox on every machine. Yes, it’s naughty, but when you bear in mind that it’s 2010 and the staff there are still using Internet Explorer 5.5 you get an idea of why we decided to change things ourselves.)

Anyway, I’ve just upgraded Firefox on my laptop. I’m sure I didn’t click to authorise anything, other than the usual. When the updated version opened, it told me that a new add-on had been added. I didn’t think anything of it, and clicked to load the browser. In front of my eyes was the horrible sight of a Yahoo toolbar dominating the screen:

Not only has this monstrosity been surreptitously placed on my browser, but Yahoo have gone out of their way to make it difficult to remove. Normally you would expect to right-click and be presented with, at the least, the option to hide it. Not here. Instead you have to do something else.

Getting Rid Of The Yahoo Toolbar:
Go to Tools > Add-ons > Extentions. Select Yahoo “toolbar” from the list, and choose whether you wish to disable it or, preferably, uninstall it.

And now everything should be perfect, right? Think again; you’ve reckoned without Yahoo and its underhanded techniques.

Yahoo Replaces My Address Bar

One feature I use everytime I’m online is the one which takes whatever terms I enter in the address bar and returns Google’s “I Feel Lucky” hit if I happen to click “enter”, rather than clicking on one of the relevant past pages that appears in a list form whilst I’m typing.

I tried it this time, with a view to being taken to a Wikipedia page which contains a link to the Australian Esperanto Association’s online forums. This time it didn’t work and I was left looking at this:

Horror of horrors! I’m now taken to a Yahoo search page! Again, this has taken place without my foreknowledge or consent. Once more, there’s no easy way of getting rid of it and reverting to the system that I was running before. You have to try something else.

Getting Rid Of The Yahoo Address Bar:
To deal with this we have to delve into the far reaches of Firefox, where laymen like me would normally fear to tread.

1: Enter about:config in the address bar, noting that there is no space either side of the colon.

2: You’re heading into uncharted waters, so Firefox sends you an alert:

3: You’re feeling brave, so click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!”

4: Filter down the list of options that appear by entering keyword.URL in the text box. This will narrow the field to one option.

5: Right-click and select “Modify”. You should see that a Yahoo address is the current value, and this is the thing that’s causing your search terms to generate a Yahoo page. We need to get rid of it.

6: Decide on what you want to happen. If you would like to have your search terms take you to Google’s “I Feel Lucky” site, then enter http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q= (changing .com to whichever domain is appropriate to your needs).

If you instead want to bring up a Google search, then enter http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= (again entering the relevant domain).

And that should be it.

Recap

So I installed an update of Firefox. Upon opening the application I was informed that an add-on had been added, and I saw a big Yahoo toolbar. It wasn’t obvious how to get rid of it, since there were no options to as much as hide it. Instead, I had to know that this was an add-on and disable it from my add-on manager.

I then discovered that Yahoo had taken over my address bar, robbing me of some of the functionality that I regularly use. Again, this wasn’t straightforward to rectify, and would oblige most people who aren’t tech savvy to seek specialist help or, which I feel is the aim here, simply put up with it.

So, it comes packaged hidden with something else, installs itself without knowledge or consent, and is designed to be hard to remove without some form of specialise knowledge. Isn’t that the definition of a trojan?

Shame on Yahoo for adopting such deceitful practices, and shame on Mozilla for incorporating them. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve had it for over ten years and doing without it would cause me a lot of inconvenience, I’d get rid of my email account with Yahoo in a heartbeat.

I haven’t got around to counting quite how many we have; it’s simply too many. It’s only by creative stacking that we’ve been able to put them all in place, so I’ve identified about twenty that will be given to a charity shop, so that we’ll have a little bit of space to hold the ones that will be undoubtedly purchased in the near future.

This is what our newly equipped office now looks like.

View From The Door

Above The Desk

Along The Length Of The Wall Between The Window & The Desk

Above The Alcove Where The Futon Is

What You See When Casting An Admiring Glance Over Your Shoulder When Leaving

We seem to be doing quite well for ourselves as far as the collection on language-related books goes

Lots Of Different Languages Represented Here!

Needless to say, we’re both very happy, and grateful to our family members who invested time, skill, and money into putting this together, whilst all we had to do in return is take our nephew to the zoo for a day, and fill him full of chocolate and biscuits. I’d say we (and he!) easily got the best end of the deal

Young Zamenhof

So he started work on his project for an international language, a mutually understood yet neutral language that each group would have in addition to its own. The Russians would still have Russian, but switch to the international language when speaking to Germans, who would keep their Germanic tongue, but opt for the international language when in conversation with the Poles, and so on.

At the party for his 18th birthday Zamenhof presented to his friends his lingwe uniwersala, the first draft of what would become nine years later Esperanto.

Since the 1920s Esperanto-speakers have celebrated December 15th as “Zamenhof Day”. Having started with only one member Esperanto has wound its way around the globe; the World Esperanto Association has members in 121 countries. Not a bad rate of success for a project started by a teenager, especially when compared to the results of efforts of intellectual heavyweights such as René Descartes

Google China's ZamTag Logo

If you’d like to find out more about Esperanto I’ve written a brief description of the language’s history, provided some useful information such as details about its alphabet, how it sounds, and how many speakers it has, and run some online forums where you can get a flavour of some of the young people who speak Esperanto in Britain, find information about our meet-ups, and get answers to any questions that you may have. Have a snoop around; it won’t take more than a few minutes and, you never know; you may find something interesting. I know I did

Thanks!

Well, it’s not so new anymore, since we’ve been here since August 28th, but this is the first time I’ve gotten around to taking some photos.

So, welcome to our house.  This is it from the outside.

Looks pretty big, doesn’t it?

Now we walk through the front door, which will put you in the hallway.  This is the view:

We have a shoe rack and a place to hang our coats and bags right by the door, so there’s no excuse for trailing mud through the house.

As you walk down the hallway you soon come to an archway on the right:

This is the entrance to our utility room, where we have more storage space than we can use, and our washing machine and tumble-dryer.

Here’s the utility room from slightly different angles:

On the other side of the utility is the gym, which is actually a garage that has had the exercise equipment put in and a TV/DVD player mounted on the wall.

Anyway, leaving the utility and going back to the hallway will take you to the living room.  This is the view if you look back over your shoulder as you enter the living room:

And this is the view as you walk into it!

Here it is from different angles:

At the bottom-right corner of the living room is an archway:

This takes you into the kitchen:

The kitchen gives us a nice view of the garden.  I’m going to build a shed where you see the white stones.

Time now to go upstairs.

We’re very lucky to have two bathrooms.

Here’s the first:

And the other one:

We have a small room which we painted blue.  It looks narrower in the photos than it really is.  The futon at the end is the same width as a double bed.

At the far end are some fitted wardrobes, which are currently filled with books, since we haven’t built a bookcase.

The old master bedroom is now an office.  Unfortunately, it’s all rather messy, as I haven’t yet put any shelving up.

There’s plenty of room at the desk:

We have a futon in this room too, which guests can use.  We have to remove the skirting board, which will allow the futon to fit into the alcove behind it, which is about three feet deep.

The final room is our bedroom, which is the longest room in the house.

We have a pretty nice view out of the window:

And that’s our house!  You may have noticed one or two ducks lying about:

, so it’s somewhat redundant to do the Loyd Grossman impression, but I’ll do one anyway:

Who lives in a house like this?  Radio and me, that’s who

I’m trying to be mature, but I could quite happily bang my head into a wall in frustration.

Clare and I are looking to get a house. The issue is complicated by Clare needing to be close to the train station and our differences of taste and preferences in houses. We’re pretty much diametrically opposed.

Clare prefers two-up, two-down terraces, to which I’ve long had prejudice and would refuse to buy.

On the other hand, I have tastes which I think follow most people’s: You ideally want to have a detached place which is quite roomy. If you can’t get to that level, you want a semi. If that’s out of your reach, you limit yourself to a terrace.

Well, I found a house that would be perfect for me a few months ago. It had been on the market since May of last year, originally for £160k. Here it is:

Wow. A newly built detached!

I smelt a rat, since the price had been knocked down to £130k and I couldn’t imagine why something so good would go untouched for so long.

Well, more time passed and the price fell to £120k. Clare and I were coming back from Rolf’s, so I made the suggestion that we could pop by Nuneaton to get a quick look, since three houses that we’d added to our shortlist were in the same neighbourhood.

One of the houses we visited was this one, and I loved it. Three big bedrooms, enclosed garden, garage, parking spaces. There’s a lake a few minutes away and a wood at the end of the road. Clare seemed impressed too. We did a practice run to the train station: 1.2 miles and no way that Clare could get lost.

Things got a bit complicated in the week when Clare discovered that there were plans afoot to place a soil-decontamination plant nearby, the first of its kind in the UK. Planning permission was withdrawn in January, but Clare was still worried that there might be an old landfill site under the house. It took a lot of research, but I eventually found maps of the old landfills and could confirm we were safe. Research also showed me that the home was built in 2005 and originally sold for £190k, so we looked on to a bargain.

So today I phoned the agent … who informed me that a contract had been signed the day before.

I’m so angry at myself for not pushing this issue earlier. Undoubtedly the fear of the soil-decontamination plant was responsible for the lack of interest. I also found out that the house had been repossessed, hence the periodic price cuts.

I can’t hold this one against Clare, even though I’d love to be able to transfer the blame away from myself. Within a week of seeing it she had conducted her research and was OK with it, so she’d not wasted any time.

I should have pushed this one earlier because of how special it is, but was reluctant to, after inadvertently hurting Clare’s feelings by seeking preliminary mortgage advice on my own because I had grown tired of waiting, so I decided to let things take their course in due time.

By doing so I’ve cost myself what would have been a perfect house, and I’ve been kicking myself all day about it. I’ve since spoken with Clare and we’re both agreed that the next time we see something that appears to be too good to be true, we won’t dawdle.

I wish we’d made that decision a month ago

Fortunately, Russian peasants and the Ancient Egyptians were kind enough to impart the knowledge of how to handle these numbers and come up with an answer with very little effort involved.

Thanks to a book that I’m reading from 1955 I’ve now discovered an even easier way, however large the numbers involved happen to be, which was used by the Mesopotamians.

The only thing you need to have in advance is a table of squares to use for reference.  You know what these are:

Obviously you’ll need to have one of those that is a little more extensive, but I don’t think that that is too much to ask if you happen to live in a world without calculators.  After all, using a washing machine to clean your clothes with the minimum of fuss is great, but they’re only any good providing that someone has gone to the trouble of building it and you’ve bought it and installed it first

Here’s an example in action, for finding the product of 102 and 96:

1) Add 102 to 96 and divide the result by 2 to get the average: 99

2) Take 96 from 102: 6

3) Find half of the difference that you calculated in 2: 3

4) In step 1 you found the average, 99.  Use your table of squares to find the square of it: 9801

5) In step 3 you found half of the difference between the two numbers whose product you’re seeking, 3. Use your table of squares to find the square of it: 9

6) Take the small square, 9, from the larger square, 9801, and you find the correct answer: 9792

And that’s just one of the interesting things from this book, which I seem to have finished off by accident in no time at all, so highly readable it is.

Man Must Measure: The Wonderful World Of Mathematics by Lancelot Hogben

So much about this book screams vintage, making it stand out in comparison to the flood of titles to which we have access fifty years later.

It’s outsize, an impressive 34 cm by 25 cm. It’s bright, the cover and each page bearing hand-drawn illustrations, indicative of a bygone age. Last, but not least, the name of its author lends an authority that we don’t get nowadays, when Ians and Daves are producing books at a prolific pace: Lancelot Hogben.

Hogben holds a special interest for me anyway, as the author of the constructed language Glossa. In his colourful life he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during WW1, before latterly holding positions in such academic institutes as the London School of Economics. The man, deceased in 1975, had pedigree.

I have read more than a handful of books on mathematics over the last few years, all costing considerably more than the fifteen shillings that this one was selling for. I’ve been leafing through a book on maths that runs over a thousand pages during the last few months. It doesn’t hold a candle to this one.

In fact, I’d consider this one probably the best maths book that I’ve read. Bearing in mind the esteem in which I hold Petr Beckmann’s A History Of π and Eli Maor’s e: The Story Of A Number this should come as high praise.

Sure, the other books document in much more detail, but this isn’t what Hogben was aiming at. He provides a great insight into the progress of mathematics over the course of millennia, in flawlessly written, sharp paragraphs.

2 Typically Colourful Pages

Honestly, the presence of so much complementary colour is magnificent. Why don’t modern books emulate this style, instead of reproducing page after page of text?

The book spans eight chapters, each progressing chronologically and geographically, and each given a specific header.

We start off with a short chapter which introduces us to the first recordings of time, which would have been done long ago by the use of moons. I always wondered how it was that so many separate ethnic groups ended up with calendars of 360 days and the base-60 counting system. Now I know, and it was presented to me in a few seconds.

Ancient Greece is our next stop, where we encounter the building of the pyramids. With such scale, there is plenty of room for error, yet the builders constructed the pyramids perfectly. The wherefores are explained simply, again complemented by brilliantly colourful illustrations.

I’m going to stop waffling on about the individual chapters at this point, simply because I can’t do them justice. This book is a joy to read and, interestingly, I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be for children. That’s a great indicator of superb penmanship. Kids, I’d wager, could follow this without a problem, yet this particular adult, who already has a background in maths, was intrigued by it too.

I’m not sure how I could recommend this anymore. If you want to spend a few hours familiarising yourself with mathematics, this is the way I think you should do it. This book will take pride of place on my bookshelf. It was a joy and, at one penny plus postage, an absolute bargain.

My plan was to drive to Radio’s, head to our favourite restaurant, then visit Stratford, where I remembered seeing ducks on the river.

Everything went exactly as planned. We arrived at The Dog accompanied with a bin bag full of presents. Because it was Valentine’s Day, we actually had to wait for space to become available in the restaurant part.

What would normally be an inconvenience turned out to be a very welcome eventuality, since it meant that we could sit at a big table in the comparatively barren pub, and unwrap the various presents.

I’ve been holding out for Radio to photograph them so that I could show what I’d bought her rather than resort to describing it but, alas, she appears not to have developed the knack of using the camera that I bought her, so I’m afraid that you’ll have to put up with loquaciousness from me.

If I remember correctly, the first parcel that I pushed over to her contained a copy of John Steinbeck’s East Of Eden. It was at the point that Radio opened it that I thought to myself “Man, for the sake of a couple of quid more, I could’ve bought a brand-new copy.” Yes, I am tight enough to buy second-hand copies of books.

There was a method to my double madness, however. When Radio opened her second present it should have all become clear. Unfortunately, this is Radio, so she instead pulled her customary confused face

“It’s a Czech book.”

“”

“By John Steinbeck.”

“”

“Jesus! It’s a Czech copy of East Of Eden. I bought you the English version so that you now have your own parallel text.”

Admittedly, it’s far too early in the day for Radio to think about reading novels in Czech, so I thought I’d better reassure her that I wasn’t expecting her to plough through the entire tome and that I figured managing a chapter would be fine. If nothing else, it’s a nice novelty present and will look brilliant on our already loaded future bookshelf.

Next came a small package containing a bright-yellow, rounded duck, made out of glass. She was accompanied by two little ducklings. I thought that they were very cute and, happily, Radio seems to have too.

Around this point we were escorted to our table in the restaurant part.
Fortunately we had a spare seat at the table, because Radio soon found out that we had a couple of extra guests, in the form of Orville and Cyril, the first a cuddly duck, the second a beautiful plushy swan. The two of them were placed on the seat facing Radio, whilst we ordered our customary meals.

In the meantime, I had opened my presents from Radio. She’d been smart enough to use my Amazon wishlist, thus guaranteeing that I received something that I actually wanted.

The first might seem a little bit strange for an adult who’s not a nerdy toy-collector. The thing is that I wasn’t a particularly spoilt child, so never got to own the several hundred various Transformers toys, so when I realised that you can buy books which show photos of (just about) every single toy that was released, I decided that I wanted it. Admittedly, this serves no purpose whatsoever, but I think that it’s no more worthless than those silly novelty “humour” books that I always seem to receive in droves every Christmas.

Radio was kind enough to buy her boyfriend this geek chic nonsense, which was finished off by the end of the weekend.

The second gift that she offered me was only finished a couple of nights back.

I’m something of a language buff and history fan, and these two interests combine to form an individual who enjoys thinking and learning about how the languages that we know now came into being, and what bits and pieces changed over time to take it from A to B.

I have several books on the English language, a subject that has seen some exciting writing, force of repetition and familiarity meaning that later writers can’t rest on their laurels. Bill Bryson and Melvyn Bragg in particular have succeeded in writing some highly readable offerings.

The same hasn’t been true of my books on other languages. I’m thinking of French and Spanish, which have been very dry, academic-style products. Since I wasn’t happy with my history of French written in English, I thought I’d try seeing whether a recent offering written in the language itself would reflect its English equivalents. With this in mind, I added Histoire De La Langue Française by Michelle Huchon to my wishlist, and Radio presented it to me at the table, which made me grin from ear to ear.

Having read it now, I don’t feel any better off than I was before. It was an incredibly dry book, suffering particularly because the author wrote in huge blocks of text that all merged into one boring whole, but the anticipation at the time of the meal was excellent.

This left only one present, Radio’s main present. I bought her a laptop for Christmas, and she’s said to me that she struggles with getting used to using the keypad. Well she got the shock of her life to see a mouse that had white and blue liquid in it and two ducks bobbing about in it

Because there’s a self-service salad bar in the restaurant, I took the opportunity to liberate a few bread rolls, since I had decided that the most appropriate place to propose would be when Radio was feeding ducks, which is something that defines her, one of the few times when you see her totally at peace in public surroundings.

Nature intervened, since the ducks had ceded the way to a bunch of geese, horrible creatures which Radio despises. Seeing nothing else on the horizon and conscious that I didn’t feel that I wanted to propose with an audience around, I decided to proceed with feeding the geese whilst we were alone.

It didn’t take too long for a couple of them to exit the water and come after Radio. This was turning out to be a disaster. The perfect proposal was becoming quite the unpleasant ordeal for Radio.

The day was saved by the arrival of some latecomers, some brave little ducks which dared enter the flock of jabroni geese. I was particularly pleased to see that the cohort featured male mallards, which are my favourite ducks.

Whilst Radio was finishing off, I took out her ring and placed it on my little finger, it being the only one where it could pass the nail. My plan almost came unstuck when Radio made a grab for my hand and would have felt the ring.  I fidgeted, but she went for it again.

Not wishing to upset her (she would’ve thought me in a mood with her) I decided that the time was nigh to pop the question.

“Actually, there’s one more present that I forgot to give you.”

“Oh, that’s OK, Babel.  I’ve had more than enough.”

“Well, I actually have it with me, so I can give it to you now.”

“Oh no, that’s OK.  You’ve given me enough already.  Save it for another day.”

It looked as though Radio was going to save me from the predicament of proposing, which was kind of her, but I decided to go ahead with it anyway, telling her to close her eyes.  She duly complied, though not without informing me that she was nervous.

It was at this point that I twigged why other people don’t propose when feeding the ducks; the ground is a soggy mire, totally inappropriate for placing a knee.  I had to resort to hovering in a crouched position.

I told her to open my eyes and, no word of a lie, she glanced left and right before spotting me kneeling.

“What are you doing down there?! ”

“There’s a ring here!  What do you think I’m doing?”

Hardly the most romantic speech in the world, but I didn’t really get the chance to say much more anyway, since she pulled me to my feet and leapt into my arms.  (Work with me: Radio’s feet never leave the ground, but this was as near to doing so as she’ll ever get.)

It would appear that she was pleased

Anyway, off we went holding hands and about fifteen minutes later she said “I can’t believe that we’re engaged.”

“I don’t think we are.  You never said yes.”

“Didn’t I?  Well you knew I was going to say yes anyway, so that doesn’t count!”

I decided that I was going to propose in early January. Radio has not been shy of the subject recently, hanging from my neck in a swimming pool in Szombathely and saying “See, they got married Babel, so why can’t we?” and writing that her ideal station in life now would be to be married.

I drove up to her parents’ house one January morning and decided that I would propose that we find out each other’s ring sizes “just in case I ever do decide to propose to you one day.”

Armed with that information, I decided to start the hunt for rings, so that I could pop the question on Valentine’s Day, at that point about four weeks away.

Normally a last-minute person, this one-off change to organising myself turned out to be a wise decision. Like me, Radio is not a jewellery person, so the traditional gold and stone was out.

I had mined her for information in reverse, by telling her the sort of rings that I would wear and ranting about the sort that I loathe. Sure enough, she volunteered that she also would prefer silver or white gold (although I said pewter), and that she would want something discreet without any protruding jewel. This was a chat about general jewellery, but I’d acquired the information that I wanted

I got in touch with a couple of married friends to find out whether men also wore engagement rings. As it happened, this isn’t traditional, but both of them wore them before getting married. This being the case, I decided that I would get myself a ring in order to show commitment to Radio, and that I would find some way of having it match whatever I got her.

And so the journey began. Passing High Street jewellers yielded nothing of interest. Checks on the internet were also singularly unfruitful.

Eventually I found one that I liked and ordered it, along with a similar one for me. This one was thin, white gold, with three jewels almost embedded within the ring, rather than jutting out.

Radio's on the left, mine on the right

There was a complication. Radio has a thin finger, needing size K. I was told that this would have to be specially made, which would mean a delivery date after Valentine’s Day. Alternatively I could try size L, the next one up. They actually didn’t have this one in stock either, but could get me one within two weeks. I placed the order, and they gave me the same ring in size P in the meantime. (There was a temporary discount on the particular ring that I had chosen, so they were nice enough to sell me a bigger one to exchange later, in case the price reverted whilst waiting for the correct one to arrive.) As luck would have it, the ring I wanted for myself was in stock at the correct size, so I paid for that there and then.

Having set things in motion, my next mission was to throw Radio off the scent. On a whim I went to eBay and looked for a Transformers ring. Unbelievably, such a thing did exist, and in one size only — mine! I blogged about it here in a smokescreening attempt, writing about marriage as some sort of future thing that I might end up doing, but not anytime soon. Radio was swerved. Mission accomplished

Three days prior to Valentine’s Day I received a call to say that my order had arrived. I explained that I was in the office, but would be able to collect it the next day. Come the following afternoon I found myself stuck at a counter for something around half an hour whilst a team of workers that srarted at one and became three were running around the stock room looking for my order.

I was asked a couple of times whether I was sure that I had received a call by an exasperated assistant forlornly hoping that repeating the same question would cause me to change my answer.

Eventually a manager informed me that I had got the message wrong. It turns out that I merely thought that my order was in, but I was actually phoned to inform me that it had been cancelled.

“If I were told that and misunderstood, why didn’t your assistant correct me when I said that I couldn’t be in that afternoon, but would instead come to collect it the following day?”

Their cover blown, they stood by helplessly, except for this manager who at least had the nous to consult their computer to check stock levels at other stores. She announced that one of their stores out of the city had one, and enquired whether I could get there. “I’ll leave right now”, I replied, and the girl helpfully place a hold order on it.

About 40 minutes later I’m in this other store. There is a nice chap helping, but he’s searching without success. I point out to him that it might not have actually been put to one side, since the order was placed within the hour. Sure enough, he looks over the computer notes and finds the recently placed order.

“Size P, yeah?”

“NO! P’s the one I’ve got now! It’s supposed to be a fucking L!”

“L? Are you sure?”

“Of course I am! I’ve been from pillar to post about this, and I can tell you that it’s an L. Well, unless you’ve got a K there, which would be preferable.”

“This ring doesn’t come in K.”

“I know! That’s why I’m having to make do with an L!”

He was a surprisingly nice chap though, found a ring in the correct size, and made the exchange with me.

It was a last-minute deal in the end, in spite of my one-time-only attempt to do things in good time, but I was armed with the rings two days before V-Day

Mi nur malofte uzis na Facebook, tamen lastatempe pasigis pli kaj pli da tempo ĉe ĝi, pro tio, ke mi instalis iun programon Vida Librobreto, kiu necesis pli ol mia kutimo duonsekundo da atento.

Tamen pli kaj eĉ pli ofte amikoj ĝenas min per la babilada funkciilo, kiun lastatempe instalis la kreintoj de FB. Aparte du amikoj ĉiam saltas sur min tuj kiam mi malfermas la paĝon, unu el kiu neniam meritas konversacion, ĉar ŝi ne havas interesindajn diraĵojn.

Sufiĉis, do mi eltrovis kiel ŝajnigi min esti for. Pro tio, ke mi uzas la Esperantan version de Facebook, mi decidis fari tiun afiŝon en la lingvo internacia.

Do, por kaŝi vian retstaton, por ke teduloj ne interrompu vian retumadon nur pro tio, ke vi pekis per okulumado de via Facebook-paĝo, faru tiel:

Ĉe la malsupra dekstra flanko de la paĝo vi rimarkos kapan ombron kun verda cirklo apuda. Tio signifas vian retstaton, kiel ĝin vidas aliaj. Verda estas ensalutita.

Klaku sur ĝin kaj fenestreto aperos, en kiu vi vidos kiujn el viaj amikoj ankaŭ estas salutitaj. Supre de ĝi klaku sur elsaluti.

Post tio, la verda cirklo fariĝos ruĝa, kaj aliaj ne scios, ke ili povos ĝeni vin.

Jen la sekreto.  Bonan maltedan kvietan Facebookumadon al vi mi deziras

Slumblebee

He enjoyed playing with his new buddy so much that I went as far as getting some friends down, this time my keyrings of Windcharger and Brawn.

Minibots Re-Released As Keyrings

So far, so good, since I’ve found a bulk lot of minibots going for a pound, so I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open there.

I used the broad search term decepticon and quickly descended on the most unusual gift, though one that is perfect for someone who meets my characteristics of being in a settled relationship that could get a little bit more serious over the next few years …

How amazing a find was this?!

It’s a silver ring, the sort a man would wear as an engagement or wedding ring, bearing the Decepticon logo where the jewel would be. Perfect!

And what’s more … it costs £0.99 plus £2.99 postage.

As if that weren’t amazing enough it comes in only one size, listed as T. Not only is that my initial, it’s also the ring size for my wedding finger, as I discovered the other day. If that’s not an omen, I don’t know what is.

It turns out that there’s another style available too.

There’s no size indicated, but I don’t think it would hurt to have another. If it’s not perfect for that finger, it would fit on another or my thumb, so it’s hardly a gamble. I could look like a Transformers version of darts supremo Bobby George

Bobby George

So there you have it. The perfect Transformers toys for him. But what of her?

As it happens, I just so happen to have found the perfect thing to please the lady in your life.

Dildotron~!