Just came across Elf Yourself from JibJab which allows you to dress up to five people as elfs and have them perform a dance afterwards. There are a number of different dnaces to choose from and the end result can be emailed or embeded so that you can share it with friends and family.

You can also download it however this is a paid for service.

If you try to upload a large image file it can take a while to process but the resulting video is well worth the wait.

Of course I had to have a go and here’s one I made earlier.

And here’s another of my brother and his family!

Okay, so the following is a complete rip from www.gHacks.net and I make no excuses for it other than I couldn’t improve on it…

‘Granted, someone will need to die before you can purchase this gift, however if you’re willing to wait than (sic) you too could brighten someone’s day with this pencil box full of pencils made out of human carbon. You also get the deceased’s name printed on the side of each pencil as you can see from the screenshot.

This is the brainchild of Nadine Jarvis who likes to create death inspired design work, or ‘work in post mortem’ if you prefer.

That’s not all though, you don’t just use these pencils until their (sic) gone, the box is designed so just one pencil can be removed at a time and are sharpened back into the box so it becomes an urn for the remains.

If you would like to be useful even after dying than perhaps this is the way to go.’

Hmmm, that gives me an idea…

No, not the British boxer but a stray dog I picked up a few days ago.

Bruno was living rough just down the road. I’d already passed him a few times and, having seen the condition he was in when I took him some food and water, I decided to take him off the streets with a view to asking APAH to try to rehome him. They have agreed and Bruno will be going to the vet this Thursday prior to being transported to the temporary APAH kennels.

Bruno is a BIG dog with a very deep and loud bark. He is however very gentle and docile, there appears to be little or no aggression in him. His tail has been rather crudely docked and at the moment he has a skin condition on his back-end which needs treating. He is also very under-nourished.

Click on his photograph for a closer look at him.

Went to see Gary from GMTMarine yesterday about redesigning his website. He kindly offered to take us out for a spin in his speedboat - who were we to refuse such a kind offer?

Setting off from La Manga marina we headed for Isla Perdiguera on the Mar Menor which is now deserted again after the three restaurants that were on there (illegally built apparently) have been torn down. Apart from the odd seagull the place was very quiet and still - it was only about 11:00 though.

After a few minutes of sightseeing from the boat we turned back and went around the bigger of the two islands - Isla de Barrón. This island is privately owned but no-one seems to know by whom. A leisurely fifteen minutes later and we were back in the marina - thanks Gary.

Oh, and we talked about work a bit too!

ThickBox is a WordPress plugin that adds the lightbox functionality to images in your posts. You can download it from the WordPress site. I found a little hack was necessary to get it to work as I didn’t fully understand the instructions provided on the author’s website.

After installing and activating the plugin the lightbox effect wasn’t working and after a little investigation I noticed that the Javascript and CSS files weren’t referenced (looked at the page source). To get round this I added the following directly into the header.php file for the template I’m using (tags removed to prevent code from being parsed on this page):

src=”http://yourdomain.com/pathto/thickbox/jquery.js” type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://yourdomain.com/pathto/thickbox.js” type=”text/javascript”
link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://yourdomain.com/pathto/thickbox.css” type=”text/css” media=”all”

I inserted the code between these two tags:

wp_head()
/head

All now seems to work ok.

I also posted a comment on the author’s website yesterday and he got back to me today to advise what the problem was and how to resolve it.

Hope this helps somebody out.

As you have to manually amend the image tags I’ve only added the effect to the RD posting for now but will be updating a few other postings as time permits.

I came across a very thought-provoking website today.

Local Cooling aims to help combat Global Warming by encouraging computer users to reduce the amount of power they waste by leaving their computers on whilst not being used.

The following information is taken from their website:

More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car!

LocalCooling is a 100% Free power management tool from Uniblue Labs that allows users to optimize their energy savings in minutes and as a result reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions.

Download the 100% Free LocalCooling Application and it automatically optimizes your PC’s power consumption by using a more effective power save mode. You will be able to see your savings in real-time translated to more environmental terms such as how many trees and gallons of oil you have saved.

Check out and download LocalCooling today…

Having been in the house for almost a year I finally gave in and decided it was time to get another dog!

APAH, the animal rescue centre that I work with had recently taken in a Fox/Yorkshire terrier cross and when I saw his photograph I had to go and see him.

I brought him back with me the same day - meet RD!
(click thumbnails for a bigger image)

Well, I couldn’t let them have roaming rights again - not after the performance I had last year. So it was a quick dash to pick up some ladders and a willing accomplice, a quick dash back to the house and then it began.

It was up to me to scale the dizzy heights to the very top of the two pine trees at the front of the house while Steve held the ladders to prevent me from falling the three hundred and sixty-three feet back to earth (it seemed that far anyway but maybe it was around thirty). Operation Kill Them Critters began with the strategic positioning of the ladders (thanks Steve) to maximise the reach of my arms and more importantly the loppers and hand-saw that were my weapons of choice.

A mere 40 minutes later and the deed was done, five caterpillar nests neatly detached from the trees, bagged and ready to be disposed of on a makeshift funeral pyre hastily arranged in an old wheelbarrow. Although we didn’t see any caterpillars during the extraction process they were very much in evidence as the nests were turned to ashes by the flames, helped along by a generous amount of petrol (lead-free of course).

No photos of me up the ladder as we were much too preoccupied with the thought of being attacked by hordes of rampaging caterpillars but, here’s a few taken during the burning!

Postscript: after all that, we missed one, so we’re going to have to do it all over again, grrr!

The one that got away…

for now!

Well, it’s that time of year again.

I spotted the first Processional Pine Caterpillar of 2008 this morning on one of the Pine trees at the front of the house.

Needless to say, following my experience with them last year this one didn’t survive very long and is now at peace up there in caterpillar heaven. I won’t mention how it was despatched from this life but, as there was only one, it wasn’t worth building a funeral pyre so I had to come up with an alternative method.

The images on this post are from last year - hopefully I destroyed enough of them to make the new batch think twice before setting up camp here this year.

We’ll see!

I started working with another web design company at the beginning of the new year - The Web Shop. The chap I am working with is a master at search engine optimisation (SEO), he can pretty much guarantee to get you on the first page in Google within three or four weeks. You can see some of his achievements to date on the website.

I am also now working with a trained graphic designer who has an excellent portfolio of completed projects, so if you have any future graphic design needs you can be sure of a very professional service.

If you’ve been considering an overhaul of your website to give it a more professional look and at the same time want to target specific keyword(s) and/or phrases for your business please feel free to get in touch with me via lee AT thewebshop DOT es.

Whether or not you decide to take advantage of the services offered by The Web Shop I wish you all the best for a prosperous 2008.