Priorities

A few circumstances in the last few days have helped me focus on the need to get a few priorities sorted. And this means using less of my time to keep abreast of blogging in the tranniesphere, and of couse making the occasional post here.

It is a happy fact (I feel) and one which I've felt for a while, well may be not so much felt (consciously anyway), but certainly acted upon, and that's the habit of spending almost a 100% of my T-Time in trannie blogs instead of, say, T-Yahoo groups and personal T-Sites. You see, you get more of an open window into fellow T-Girls lives and personalities by reading their blogs as opposed to the biographies and gawking in the galleries (no offence intended to those that like to gawk - I do occasionally).

And if you've been travelling the virtual T-World for nearly 10 years, as I have, there comes a point where you're gonna get bored reading your nth bio.

Conversely, people writing and living in the present is ever-changing, fresh, and dare I say it without sounding pretentious - vibrant.

But I digress. BTW, that was triggered by something Becky said the other day.

Back to those darn priorities. Work has been piling up to the extent that I'm feeling very uncomfortable about deadlines, working too long hours, and not seeing enough of the family. And all of these circumstances should quite rightly take precedence over a lifestyle issue that I'm now very comfortable with.

The plan is to get out more in T-Girl mode, but cut back on virtual time. At least until the personal/family/work balance has been restored to sensible proportions.

So I will email Becky to ask her to put me down for the "Tranniesphere Ball". And leading on from that, I feel it's a real opportunity, this "Tranniesphere Ball" thing, to get more "regular" folk enjoying an evening out with us, not because we're glammed up (although I've no objection to that), or because we're noticeably different, but because these people recognise there's a "real" person underneath the "panstick" and quite possibly that we're worth getting to know a bit better.

Of course, this whole priority thing could fall to pieces, be instantly destined to dismal failure if Siobhan keeps coming up with brilliant "interviews", Becky comes up with more excellent memes, and Miss K produces those very evocative photo "exhibitions". I mean can you lot not ease up for a second instead of keep uping the blogging anti? All I'm saying is give a guy a break - please. On the other hand may be I shouldn't blame others for my addiction!

BTW, these aren't the only blogs I read and enjoy. Won't make another list in case one gets left out and I offend!

Take care everyone.

First for TG Couple

I woke this morning, as usual, to the Radio Lincolnshire News. Nothing special you may think, but this morning was a bit different. I mean, how often is it that people you know make the headlines, and maybe more to the point the fact that they made the News, because they are the first TG couple in Lincolnshire to get married under rights alotted to them by the Gender Recognition Act.

Congratulations to Sarah and Neil, a couple who have been in a relationship for 10 years. Neil was with Sarah in 1997 when she went through the gender re-assignment surgery.

I have only met them 2 or 3 times at their home where they hold monthly Beaumont Society meetings, but I can say they are a warm, generous couple who've put themselves out for others in the community - and I wonder how many T-Girls have benefited from their hospitality.

Good luck to the both of you!

Need a Laff?

It's been quite literally years since I paid Joe a visit, far too long in fact. And when the thought entered my head yesterday I went back to my old "dial-up" haunt to revisit some classic Joe.

Certainly brightened up my evening.

WARNING: Joe doesn't know the meaning of PC so if you have refined sensibilities, are a member of an animal rights organisation or have had a GSOH lobotomy try this web page instead.

I tried linking direct to a few of my favourites in the list below, but Joe just sends you to the home page, so go to the site map page where you'll find the ones I've listed in the "Cartoons" column - Joe Cartoon

• Joe Fish
• Super Fly
• Live and Let Dive - you must click on the "Judges Comments"
• Micro-Gerbil 2001
• Gerbil in a Light Socket
• Gerbil Genocide
  
• Frog Bender 2000

Enjoy!

Google Blog Search

On 14 Setember, Google launched a beta version of a blog search tool . Well, it was only a matter of time wasn't it.

And it's not the first to market, but like so many things in life because it's the biggest (mentioning no names, Microsoft) it may well prove to be the market leader within a very short time.

I actually tried quite a few search terms before succumbing to the inevitable search on the words" trannie" and "tranny". Now, it's a matter of record that Siobhan amongst others prefers "trannie", like me, and Becky and Jo seem to prefer "tranny".

So now for the surprises - TV Dreams, my blog, was second in the list for the term "trannie" with Siobhan's no where to be seen, and whilst Becky's Web seems to out rank everyone in the normal Google search Joanna's Diary is like a rash for the search term "tranny" in the blog search.

Of course, my advice to any blogging trannies out there is to use the term "tranny" if you're after search engine rankings coz that seems to be the common parlance.

Also, for the record, it's so unfair that Google's blog search has ranked my site for the term "trannie" but not Siobhan's, and for those well acquainted with my sense of humour I say that without a trace of irony.

But getting back to Google blog searches in general, the speed of returned results is to their usual high standards, but it's the quality of returned results that doesn't impress me so far. You seem to get a lot of entries from the same sites so not much breadth and arguably not much depth either. Mind you, Google do seem to make a habit of improving on their performance (with a few notable exceptions) so I'm watching this space...

As more and more companies turn to blogs as a form of marketing so I see their importance to commercial activities increasing hugely within a very short period of time, and of course so will the spammers activities, as we have seen already.

OK, reckon I'll bugger off now and checkout words such as "transvestite" and "transexual"...

I don't believe it! Having just posted this entry and then returned to Google's Blog Search this page is at position three and four for the search term "transvestite" and at position one and two for "transexual".

This only goes to heighten my suspicions that bloggers using Google's blogger.com get an unfair advantage - surely Google must be giving proirity to blogger.com pages? Hardly fair I'd say!

Dangerously nostalgic

There was I considering blogging on about the dangers of nostalgia when, in my usual prevaricating way, I started my daily blog run - Tranniefesto, Becky's Web, Joanna, Miss K... and what should confront me on Miss K's site but a look back at the days of the "Six Inch Killaz" - maybe there's something in the water of the Tranniesphere?

Perhaps nostalgia isn't so dangerous, but acting on it maybe a different matter. See if I can explain... Back in '74 (I can remember it vividly) picture the front room of small terrace house, with one of those long, low cabinets with speakers built in at each end - I think they called them stereograms. Anyway, Trevor (no connection with my friend from Glossop) had invited a few of us round to hear an album by Frank Zappa - The Mothers: Filmore East 1971. Well, you wouldn't play it within earshot of your parents, that's for sure. The album made a definite impression and over the years I'd thought about buying it, and I suppose as time has gone by the impression has grown in my mind - that aside, I found a copy on the internet (www.101cd.com) bought it and have just finished listening to it.

It's just as filthy as I recall, but it's painfully obviously that it's attraction was the adolescent/college humour. Perhaps you'll get an idea from the title of one of the tracks - "Bwana Dik".

The album does have a couple of redeeming tracks, "Do you like my new car?" and "Happy Together". "Do you like my new car?" is a wonderful piss-take of college-kid Pop Star groupies, and pop stardom - as you may know Zappa was no pop courtier, and he makes a few digs at the likes of David Cassidy and Elton John.

The follow-on track, "Happy Together" shows that "The Mothers" were quite capable of pop renditions, and I'm sure the song will sound very familiar allbeit done FZ's way!

Just goes to show nostalgia can play funny tricks on the mind...

"I was so busy"... no, really!

The last two days have been a nightmare. Picture this, you're behind with client's work coz one of 'em monopolises your time during the previous month (take note the trouble you can get into, Siobhan) and you've promised some quite simple work will be done for another one, immediately... and then your computer goes caput.

Result - two days of inordinate stress while trying to figure out what the f*ck is going on.

Turns out "My Documents" was stuffed so full of files and folders (2500 folders and nearly 40,000 files) that indexing same became too much for my wee computer and Photoshop reacted by shutting down every time I tried to open a file.

True to my stoical nature I spend a day and a half trying to fathom the problem, or find workarounds before giving in and enlisting the help of an associate. Answer shove "old" or seldom used files and folders into a separate directory outside of "My Documents" before uninstalling/reinstalling Photoshop - everything back to bliss. OK to just deal with ordinary stress now... Yipee!!

Oooh, and my new Dell laptop should arrive any day now, getting all excited. Have to think of a reason to justify it to her "who must be obeyed" or, more accurately, fulfill the promises I made relating to its use. Still find it difficult to have to think up new and fresh ideas/reasons for purchasing new toys - ho hum.