life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

Okay, I'm sure that 8787 other people have come up with this before me, but what if

( May contain traces of spoilers )

I took a look in Forbidden Planet and there were this couple with a small baby in a buggy. Daddy (who had a ponytail halfway down his back) was holding his very small daughter up to a rack of comics. Carefully imprinting her, like a baby bird...

Hey, does anyone know why slemslempike is gone?

Well, I installed Firefox 2. Not only are my bookmarks and history still there, but so are all the search engines I had before :) The tabs look a little strange, but I expect I'll soon get used to that.

Firefox has reset itself to some sort of minimalistic version—all the preferences have reset themselves, though oddly the bookmarks and extensions are still there, and, exceedingly annoyingly, the search bar has no engines to choose from, and when I go to the add engines page it doesn't work. I've already tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it, and using System Restore. Nothing brings them back.

I would install Firefox 2, which I haven't bothered to do yet, but what if I do, and the search engines are still AWOL?

Seen on a wall at the back of M&S:
You don't hit your weaker wife because your stronger boss hit you. I considered adding 'Who says she's weaker? but was scuppered by lack of spraypaint.

The farming newspaper reported: Mr A won the conventional ploughing competion and Mr B won the reversible ploughing competition. Technically, they mean Mr B won the competition of ploughing using a reversible plough :D

Ok, shoot me now. If it had been set in Belfast instead of Cardiff....

The characters:

Richard Oldham. Token ethnic minority, ie English. Has angsty past (he's a vampire), and current problem; the fact that the Prodisans and Cafflicks dislike him almost as much as they do each other.

Seosamh O Mhaollchallann, né Joseph Mulholland. (The other Torchwood members call him Joe because they can't pronounce Irish). Does the history-geek stuff. Lecturer in Irish Studies at Queen's University Belfast. This only takes up 5 hours of his week, so he has plenty of time for Torchwood.

Ian McCaughey. Computer-genius boy. Grew up on dairy farm in Kells Ahoghill, which he avoids visiting. Sexist in a teenage sort of way. Was called after Ian Paisley. Finds this embarrassing, but still votes DUP.

Heather Blair. Hails from Cherryvalley. Source of ready cash (rich family) and general facilitator, the Ianto type. Has a dark secret in the basement, possibly involving Semtex. Slightly pretentious middle-class.

Cliodhna O'Neill. Native of Tuam, County Galway. (Ian tends to mention Galway hookers*) Annoys Joe by speaking better Irish than he does. She's the one who froths at the mouth and starts kneecapping people for the greater good of humanity in the first episode.

Frankie Devlin. As a bisexual Catholic female, she was a godsend to the PSNI recruitment. She found out there was a Torchwood and a rift in space and time in the middle of Belfast after being hit on the head with a half-brick during a sectarian riot on Donegall Pass. Possesses an alledged background in Ballymurphy, stripey hair, mum (Bernadette) played by Ma from Gie ma Head Peace, put-upon boyfriend called Mickey and an anomalous middle-class mindset.

*Galway hooker=variety of small boat

Possibly doyle_sb4 and marymac are the only two people on the intarwebz who would get both the TW and nI references.

For future reference, I'm jediowl on Vox and Journalfen, and Catre on GreatestJournal.

Mind you, you could just go *insert whining that LJ is dead here*

What with all the people talking about NaNo, I had a go and wrote 500 words of a Star Wars fic. It's harder than it used to be; I think I've forgotten how. I don't know how people actually write 50000 words in a month.

Query: is there anywhere else in the world that has their fireworks at Hallowe'en, or is it just Northern Ireland? (You'd think the Loyalists would be right behind the let's-burn-the-Cafflicks implicit in Guy Fawkes night, but no. Perhaps the 11th of July is enough for them.)