High drama in Trumpton

[susie_flo]

If anyone were to ask me if I'm superstitious I would say "Pfffft!  Superstition is mere idiocy!"   ...and yet the lone magpie that was wandering up and down my road as I wandered to the shops today still had me scouring the skies for a partner.  (Tsk to a lifetime of conditioning).
   
Since I've been off work I've become ludicrously "local" and have started reading notices on lamp posts and the small ads in the post office. Right now there is a slightly comical cat drama being acted out in my road via the medium of lamp-post...
   
It started a few weeks ago when someone posted A4 pics of a long haired seal-point cat with the text  "Is this your cat?  This cat has been spotted in Godstone Road over the last few weeks and I am afraid it is missing from home.  If you have any information, please phone Steve on xxxx"   (In fairness I'm pretty sure I made a similar comment to G when I first spotted the cat, simply because it looks a bit unkempt for a pedigree.)

Today has seen the appearance of new posters on the lamp-posts, featuring a close-up mugshot of the cat's face with the text  "I am not missing!  I live in Godstone Road, but well-intentioned people keep cat-napping me in the belief that I am lost.  This just stresses me out and delays me getting my daily medication"    (Well it made me lol...  though, admittedly, I don't get out much these days.)

 
 
Meanwhile if any of you English roses happen to be wondering what to buy for dinner tonight, I shall pass on the following seasonal recommendations for the month of May, courtesy of the Ashburton Cookery School... 

 

Fruit and vegetables: 

Asparagus, Broad beans, Globe artichokes, Cornish early new potatoes,

New season carrots, Rhubarb, Samphire, Spinach

 

Fish: 

Brown Crab,  Lobster, Brill, Cod, Grey Mullet, Hake, John Dory, Lemon Sole,

Mackerel, Megrim Sole, Pilchards, Plaice, Pollack (line caught), Ray, Sardines

(We've been eating quite a bit of mackerel with rhubarb & asparagus this month, which has been totally delicious)

 

Finally - a quick Q:  do any of you use Google Chrome as your main browser?  And if so, do you keep finding things that don't work in it?  I'm finding that whenever I post blogs to LJ or Blogger I end up having to come out of Chrome and do it in Firefox or IE because the editing interface doesn't work properly in Chrome  - especially things like image resizing or even basic rich text formatting.   (It''s annoying because I rather like Chrome when it behaves.)

 
 

Comments

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Me and Mr Pops use Chrome and find every so often it just sort of sticks and crashes, but as I don't do the things you're describing I don't know if it is rubbish at that.

When Brezeska had a skin allergy and looked really scabby and manky I was tempted to put a note round her neck saying 'It might not look like it but I am being treated by the vet - honest'.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Bless her! It wouldn't be a bad idea round here as there are obviously plenty of eagle-eyed people around, waiting to rescue sick-looking cats.

I once put a notice up myself when there was a pretty tortie cat living on my back stairs. She was doing no harm but was there every time I looked, no matter what time of day or night, and I was sure someone must be missing her. (After posting my note she suddenly stopped appearing, so I suspect the owner must have decided to keep her in for a bit)

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I use Chrome, and only Chrome. My experience of it has improved out of all recognition since I installed the extension "Flashblock" - Chrome and Flash have had a fairly long running issue. Some of the code in Flash conflicts with Chrome's and causes pages to reeeeallllllyyyy sloooooowwwwww doooowwwwwn ... and eventually crashes your browser. You start getting that "do you want to kill this page, or wait?" type message pop up, and all your pages go slowly or behave badly.

Flashblock appears as a wee icon in your address bar - click on it to enable flash on a site. Otherwise any elements that require flash on a page come up blank with a little "F" in the upper left corner. Clicking on it enables flash temporarily (so you can do stuff like watching a Youtube vid embedded in Facebook, for instance). It has the happy side effect of killing all those animated ads that appear down the side of every webpage these days and that constantly distract you while you're reading.

Since installing it I have only had one crash, and because I'm choosing where and when to run flash - I can watch a video and then close that webpage, so I don't end up with lots of pages with flash enabled at the same time. This tends to mean that where there is a page where I *do* want to use flash, it runs better because it's not conflicting with the half dozen pages I have in the background that are also running it.

Worth a try.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I might try that as I do get the "some script or other has stopped working" message quite often.

I still wish Chrome would work properly with rich text editors though.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I don't use them myself, as I tend to like doing my markup by hand, but yeah, Chrome is definitely not without its problems.

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Tsk to a lifetime of conditioning
I conditioned myself out of it. Or attempted to, following a discussion at work about superstitions. I mentioned that I always say 'Morning Mr Magpie!' if I see one. Somebody said 'What, out loud?'. So now I say it in my head!

I keep switching between Chrome and Failfox. Chrome often refuses to load LJ and Twitter. Failfox is just so fecking slow.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Heh, I did actually greet the magpie out loud today, mainly because he/she was such a fine-looking bird... (but I have no shame).

Agree about the browsers... I mainly use chrome but end up flicking between all three to get around different random foibles.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

It always makes me a little sad to see a missing cat poster. I always assume that they are never found (fox food, innit).

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Me too... (I can't wait until someone invents a form of micro-GPS tracker that is small enough to put an end to lost cats forever)

[green-badger.livejournal.com]

Like this, you mean?

http://www.catgpstracking.com/

Though that one looks a bit big. You can get tiny ones that track them within a limited range.

http://www.cat-tracking-system.co.uk/page/kitty_tracker

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

For some reason the first link won't open but the second one looks interesting.

I'm a bit suspicious though because the photo of the cat is cut off at the collar... which means you can't really see how big the device is. (Everything I've seen so far is too big to be comfortable for the cat).

What I'd like to see is a development in miniaturisation and long-term battery life to the extent that the cat's microchip could double up with GPS for its entire lifespan.

(Mind you I suspect that the minute such a thing is invented it will be used wrongly on children and unwitting partners and become a human rights issue!)

[green-badger.livejournal.com]

The top one is a matchbox-sized thing that you strap onto your cat using a harness. It's a proper GPS but the idea is you put it on for 24 hours and then plug it into your computer afterwards to see where your cat has been during that time.

The second one does look pretty little - there's a better picture of it on the order form/brochure bit.

I suspect miniturisation isn't quite up to a proper cat tracker yet. But yes I'm sure they would get misused! xxx

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

That does look smaller than any I've seen so far - progress! (Pricey though)