Iconic Spring Clean

I've been having a bit of a spring clean round here and have cleared out my Blogroll on the right. A number of dead links have gone and the still-alive-but-barely links have been moved to the bottom of the sidebar in their own list. I have also found a rather shiny new icon for the Updated indicator (found at http://www.iconarchive.com/).

Which reminds me - I had my first attempt at a bit of pixel art this week, trying to convert this:

into an icon to use as a favicon for the HRMC website.
I tried shrinking the file with FrontPage, but that produced this:

and then this:

Rather blurred and thus not so good.

So I tried this website and created this:

Which I'm quite pleased with. (Click icon for larger version).
To check how it looks in situ, go here.

Btw, I doubt there will be more updates for a week or so, as I am going away (Will tell you more when I get back...)

PS. And thanks to Michelle for bringing the Google translator to my attention - it can now be found towards the bottom of the sidebar. And apologies to her & Jim for the intermittent fault with the BitmapWorld graphic that keeps vanishing (or at least it does for me!). Can anyone else see a graphic link for it on the sidebar...?

Less-than-Multiple Choices

On a slightly silly note...

Michael & I came up with a new term last night...

When answering multiple choice questions, it's frequently the case that there is at least one answer that it just could not be. I commented on this and came up with the following example:
Question: What colour is the sky?
A: Red
B: Yellow
C: Green
D: Blue
E: Parrot

This lead to the coining of the term 'the Parrot', meaning the option/answer that it just cannot be because it makes no sense at all.

A more 'real life' example might be a TV phone-in with the question: "For the Benefit of... who?" was a song by the Beatles? A: Mr Kite, B: Mr Jones, C: Mr Blobby. (In case you missed it, C is the Parrot!).

A bloom by any other epithet (aka Language 1)

England is a single country, right? Where everyone speaks the same language, yeah? Not so much!
Since moving 'oop North' about 18 months ago, there have been a number of occasions where I have felt like I am speaking a whole other language to those around me.

The first and most obvious perhaps is the area of Dialect. I have learnt a surprising number of new words in the past year or so. Do you know what the following mean (answers will be given later)?

1. Nithered
2. Pack-up
3. Sand shoes (I have come across 4 different terms for these!)
4. Bread cake
5. Riggweltered
6. Canny
7. more to come

And similarly, in my various dealings with American English, there have been a number of words that I have had to look up, often resulting in an outburst of "Oh! It's one of those!" when the item turned out to be something I knew very well, but not by that name. Such as:

1. Skillet
2. Ground meat
3. Shredded cheese
4. Rutabega
5. Thrift store
6. Duplex
7. Jumper (US)
8. Biscuit (US)
9. Sausage (US)
10. Baseboard
    

Look-alikes 2

For part 1, see here.
Watching the rugby just now, I was struck by how much the French Manager, Jo Maso, looks like celebrity tapdancer, Lionel Blair:




And just to let those few who still visit here know... there are about 4 posts in the pipeline (including 3 'themed' ones!). However, unlike Michelle, Jenni or Kate/Cakes seem to, I struggle with writing anything coherent and thus these things take a lot of mulling-over-whilst-filing-Xrays. I'm working on it, though!