Miki Shaw's blog

QotD: How To Kick A Cold

What do you do to get rid of a cold or flu? 
Submitted by ashenflowers.

Can the pedant in me first point out that a cold is totally different (and far less life threatening) than the flu! My great-grandfather died in the flu epidemic of 1918/19, so I know what I'm talking about here.

To get rid of a cold I:

• Swallow copious amounts of Vitamin C and multivits
• If the cold is just starting, I try Aconite (homeopathic) and Echinacea. I know homeopathy gets bad press, but sometimes it works better for me than anything else
• Inhale steam. Infact this has developed into a bit of a habit. Whenever I have a hot drink, while I'm waiting for it to cool to below mouth-burning temperature (which for me is a long wait),  I like breathing in the steam. Just in case there's a cold virus lurking somewhere up a nostril...
• Have chicken soup
  
• Stay very warm
  
• Sleep it off
  

 Whereas with the flu I:

• Stay in bed for a week
• Have lots of fluids
  
• Feel wretched
  

Wiki picky

I'm trying to choose myself a Wiki, but my criteria are proving difficult to satisfy.

There's one feature I'd really like but it doesn't seem to be on offer. It's the option to make individual pages viewable by different categories of people. Like the way that Vox and Flickr let you choose accessibility options on your posts, so you can specify whether a given item is veiwable by anyone (public), friends, family, or no-one (private).

Someone else seems to want this feature to be added to WordPress. But does it exist on any Wiki already?

If only this feature was mentioned on WikiMatrix. Sigh.

Failing that, I'm considering JotSpot (which offers a choice of "public", "shared" or "private", so not a bad compromise.)

Vox Hunt: Are You Ready To Rock?

Show us some concert photos.
Submitted by Abigail Road.

Badlydrawnboy3_JPG

This is from a Badly Drawn Boy concert I went to in October 2002 when I was visiting Toronto.  What with him being well known in the UK but not much in Canada (at the time), I managed to get myself a last-minute ticket and a great spot at the front, no trouble at all. I'm not up-to-date with his music at the moment, but was very into it at the time. I still really love the track "Once around the block".

QotD: My Favorite Sense

Which of your five senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing, or smell) do you value the most?
Submitted by Elisheva.

Sight. No doubt about that one.
My forays into sign language have taught me that hearing is more expendable.
In fact I can imagine some advantages to being deaf, such as not being bothered by those irritaing people on the tube with sound-leaking headphones. But I can't think of any advantages to being blind. (But maybe that's because I've never learnt braille.)

QotD: I Give It 5 Stars

What's your favorite restaurant?

It's got to be "Food for Friends", a veggie restaurant in Brighton, because that's where my husband Andy proposed to me! He didn't get down on one knee but he did buy me two helpings of their splendid pistachio ice-cream for dessert.

The reason he proposed in this resaturant? It's where we went for our first date in December 2002 (which co-incidentatly was the day the old pier fell down). I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

QotD: Surprise!

Do you like surprises?

Yes, especially if they feature birthday cake! :)

QotD: Right Before I Doze Off

What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?

If I have to get up in the morning, I think about whether the alarm clock is set correctly and about the terrible repercussions should it not go off in time.
If I don't have to get up, I think "bliss" and drift off to sleep with a little smile in my mind.

Hello World

Here's my obligatory first blog post, in which I say nothing in particular, but just enough to test out the local facilities.

So, I'm feeling bold, if a bit italic, and would just like to underline some large and small matters. (Being new to blogging, I'm also a bit green.)

I look like this:

18523508_39c1948ce0

And I'm reading this:

The Riddle of the Sands (Penguin Classics)

Hello world!