English at Terry’s

I’m getting frustrated because although I can get the default photos from Flickr (Donncha’s) I can’t seem to get anyone else’s. I followed the suggestion – to scroll down on my Flicky homepage until I see the feed link, but I can’t find it.

How do I change the font colours in the sidebars? I want to change the black to blue in the text block on the left and the blue to black in the Twitter heading. It would look a lot better and more consistent.

I think I’ve got the twitter installed and have worked out how to use it. Whether it becomes something I find useful in the end, I’ll have to wait and see.

I can’t seem to load my Blogroll onto the site. It has blogs on it but it doesn’t appear. Also, I can’t seem to upload my pic. (avatar) either. Otherwise, all good! So far …

Don’t read this! It’s only about the things that I want to improve in my life. Things like the colour of some of my teeth. Some of my unmonitored thoughts. And some of my aspirations.

In fact, I should be telling myself not to write this.

In the space above (considered in temporal terms) I just did. So there’s no more to read! Just know that I’ll be a better person if you ever meet me than I would have been if I had not made the resolutions that I never told you.

I copied and pasted the entry on the world in 2008.  Had to re-insert paragraphs and couldn’t adjust font style or size after pasting. Also, the superscript for ordinals (1st, 2nd, etc) interferes with lines spacing so I returned the ordinals to not automatically making them a superscript and repasted. Seems to have worked. Though I’d still like to have it in a larger font size.

2008 Around the World 

2008 will be a busy year for certain people with certain interests in certain pockets of the world. Humans do like round numbers and remembering. From the local – the 50th Anniversary of the Midland and Northern Counties French Bulldog Club – to the global, of which more later.

The Republic of Estonia declared independence from Russia 90 years ago and the Estonian Anniversary Working Team has prepared a very thorough schedule of events for 2008. Each month has been given a theme. January is the Month of the War of Independence, for instance, but I think they were scratching when they got to May (Month of the Chancellor of Justice and the National Audit Office) and August (Month of the Bank of Estonia). A list prepared by bureaucrats methinks.

Also in 2008, the city of Québec commemorates its 400th birthday. In 1608, French explorer Samuel de Champlain chose Québec as the administrative seat for the colony of Canada and New France. Champlain’s Habitation de Quebec was built initially as a permanent fur trading outpost.  He later forged a trading and military alliance with the Algonquin and Huron nations who traded their furs for French goods such as metal objects, guns, alcohol, and clothing. They also probably gave the country its name by referring to the existing settlement in their own language as a village or canada.

A hundred-and-fifty years ago, in 1858, a 14-year-old French girl called Bernadette Soubirous told the people in her village that she had seen the Virgin Mary. The villagers believed her and today some six million pilgrims each year, mostly Catholics, converge on Lourdes, many hoping for a miraculous cure for their aches and illnesses. According to one news agency, “the expected big influx of pilgrims for the anniversary year promises to create a logistical headache, and a planning meeting precedes the start date”. One planning meeting?  It had better be a miraculous one!

And so to the second-largest city in Finland with the curious name of Espoo. Say it again, slowly. Curious in English but presumably prosaic enough in Finnish. The first entry registering the existence of Espoo parish occurred way back in 1458. The city’s website, along with a list of events to celebrate the anniversary, has background links to Espoo in a Nutshell and Living in Espoo. Click on them, if only to get rid of those images! On reflection, though, a city whose sights include WeeGee House, Tapiola Church, and Glims Farmstead Museum is probably well worth visiting in its 550th anniversary year.

Raising our eyes and minds a little, we see that 200 years ago the Congress of the United States of America passed legislation abolishing the Atlantic slave trade. This followed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act passed by the British parliament a year earlier in 1807. Appropriately, 2008 is also the 60th anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Fifty years ago, in 1958, the Grammy Awards were conceived. The first were presented the following year, winners including Perry Como, Ella Fitzgerald and the Kingston Trio.

The Grammies probably reached their peak, though, 25 years ago when Michael Jackson received eight of them for sales in 1983, seven for Thriller, the biggest-selling album of all time. You’ll be thrilled to learn, I’m sure, that a 25th anniversary edition of the album will be released in 2008.

Also 25 years ago, Disneyland’s Tokyo branch opened for massive Asian business. Of all the Disney theme parks only the two Japanese ones, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, are not owned by The Walt Disney Company. The Disney theme is leased by The Oriental Land Company but I’m sure the conditions of the lease are strict. You shall not take the Mickey out of Disneyland. That kind of thing.

The United Nations has designated 2008 four different years. This is the first time since 1959 that the UN has picked four themes for a single year. Three was the previous record in 2001 and 2002. 2008 is officially the year of Planet Earth, Languages, Sanitation, and the Potato. Yes, the humble spud gets its own year at last.

You may know that, once the lunar year has turned on the 7th of February, we will enter the Chinese Year of the Rat. You may not know that it has also been designated by a conservation group as the Year of the Frog. Take your pick of small animals.

Other organisations are calling 2008 the Australian Year of the Scout, Year of the Reef, Year of the Spaceship, International Polar Year, European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (the bureaucrats again), Year of Mobile Media, and, in the UK, the Year of Reading (the pursuit not the town, although if I were the Mayor of Reading I would definitely work it into my Annual Plan somehow).

It seems that we are free to call a year anything we want – maybe it’s a Universal Human Right – so I hereby designate 2008 the Year of My Becoming a Bit Happier, a Bit Healthier, and a Bit Richer. And may it be for you too!

… Potato!

Yes, the United Nations has designated 2008 the year we celebrate the humble spud.

I had a look around a few ‘free’ image sites to download a new photo for the top of my site. Two issues. I need a long flat one and although I can crop one to fit it still needs to be more or less long and flat to start with. These are hard to find.

 Also, some of them are completely free and some require attribution. How do I attribute a pic if I use one?

Hi and welcome to Terry’s Place!