Calendars

I decided I don't like Upcoming as a shared calendar organiser, a great idea but too fiddly to use and too focused on events by location rather than events by "areas of interest".

But I am liking Google Calendar, so far. If you're using it, or thinking of using it, and you're the kind of person who likes to keep track of tranny events in the UK, you might like to click on this.

If you're the kind of person who arranges tranny events and stuff, let me know of any events you want adding. At some point I'll get round to writing something that ties into the API and does clever things.

Probably. :-)

Oh the power!

Look! I made someone do something!

Here.

It's very good too. :-)

Barbie in Derby

Kind of trips off the tongue doesn't it? Got a long weekend coming up, Jane and I are visiting friends on Friday night, and on Saturday we're off to Sophie's for her birthday BBQ bash. Some blogging may ensue, if not I'll see you on the other side!

Scalpel... suction... spanner...

Overheard in the office:

“It’s hardly rocket surgery!”

I have this cartoon in my mind of a couple of surgeons working on a prostate missile. The kind of thing Plutos the Bubbleman knocks out. (Hint. Hint.) ;-)

The Tinkerbell Syndrome

I watched a programme on BBC3 yesterday evening called "The Trouble with Gay Men". In it, Simon Fanshawe discussed what he saw as the problems with being gay in Britain today.

Programmes like this always interest me. The gay scene in the UK overlaps the tranny scene more than some trannies would like to accept, and the gay mentality overlaps the tranny mentality more than some trannies would like to admit.

Simon Fanshawe is gay, and he grew up fighting for the rights that gay men now almost take for granted. Today in Britain, gay men enjoy almost identical rights to straight people . Gay culture, Simon argues, should now "grow out" of it's adolescent penchant for sex and drugs and adopt a more adult and responsible attitude.

I'm not steeped in gay culture, but from what I've seen of it, and from parallels I can draw with the tranny culture, this isn't going to happen. Why? Because part of the appeal of being in these cultures is the ability it gives you to not to act your age or be responsible. A lot of trannies (myself included I admit) dress in clothes that aren't always appropriate to our ages. Because in some ways enjoying transvestism is as much about denying your adulthood as it is about denying your masculinity. That's why, I think, trannies sometimes describe it as a "release"; they are (temporarily) abdicating the responsibilities of their age as well as their gender.

If many gays are suffering from the Peter Pan syndrome, then many trannies are suffering from something similar. We're just not as keen on wearing green.

There'll always be the gay guys who want to settle down in steady monogamous relationships and be "grown up", but there'll always be gay men who just want to sleep around with as many guys as they can and do a lot of drugs. Equally there'll always be trannies who dress to their age and who's idea of a good night is watching EastEnders en-femme, and other trannies who dress up like teenagers (or younger) and frolic about like there's no tomorrow.

Simon used that horrible argument that gays who perpetuate the image of homosexual men as camp, carefree, vain sexual deviants are ruining it for the "good" sensible gays like him. This smells very much like the protests I sometimes hear from trannies who get their knickers in a twist about anyone or anything that doesn't present "a positive image of transgenderism". Whatever that is.

If you want to be seen as part of a culture, but you don't like the parts that don't fit your morals or standards, then you should work to make your part of the culture more visible, rather than deriding or denying what the others are doing. There's no point in me pretending, for example, that a lot of trannies aren't just hairy panty-wearing freaks. They are, God love 'em.

But then there's me too. I'm not. And neither are a lot of my friends. If you want to be part of a culture, you have to put up with the other people in it. It's their culture too.

Extreme to the Max!

A while back Joanna (inspired by extreme ironing) had the idea to set up a Flickr Group for pictures of cross-dressing in extreme environments, which she called (with her typical wit and imagination) Extreme Crossdressing.

Cue some rather lacklustre attempts to rise to the challenge by me, Karol and a few others. Then Siobhan decided to go trampolining in a wedding dress.

Then it went a bit quiet, and standards dropped. The last one I was really impressed with was this. (Woah dudette! Standing in a lake! EXTREME!)

And then Gillian comes along today and raises the bar.

Very very high.

Now, you see, your average tranny-in-the-street can't compete with that. That's just overkill. A normal person would give up and say she's "won" the competition. But not me, I decided to bring out the big guns.

I've had this picture in my collection for a few years now (rougly 14 billion) but I didn't think it was good enough quality to present. But Gillian needs bringing down a peg or two.

So behold, Becky cross-dresses in the most extreme environment ever, about five trillionths of a second after the big bang:



Yeah, I know, you don't need to tell me... I should have used a fill-in flash.

Look, I was in a hurry, okay? It was a one-take deal!

Snake

Slight change of pace.

Jane and I went for a walk around King's Lynn's docks today, and I took some pictures that I'm particularly pleased with.

Audience

You see, it's all about audience. When I write to this blog, I'm writing almost subconsciously with an audience in mind. It affects the way I write, and what I write about. When I first started blogging my mental audience was, basically, my close friends. Then over time I started to modify that audience. I realised I'd got a sizeable non-UK readership, so I try when I remember not to use too many British colloquialisms. Meeting Jane had another effect, with her in the audience I'm less happy blogging about my personal feelings. Not because I don't want her to know them, just that I think she deserves to hear them first. Strangely, I've become more private now I have someone to share my private life with.

But, usually I write as if I'm talking to friends. My mental audience for my website is made up of:

• people I know


• people I don't know but are cool with the tranny thing


• and people I don't know who aren't cool with the tranny thing, which is fine because I don't care what they think.

The other day I was told by my boss that he'd been told by his boss that my site had been discovered within my organisation. I wasn't in trouble, per-se, my boss just wanted to warn me off from blogging too explicitly about my workplace.

I'm very grateful for that warning, and it's forced me to re-think things a bit. For one thing it made me decide to tell a close work colleague about all this (the post from a couple of days ago). For another I realise now that I was being very blasé about what I blogged about.

It was inevitable that this site got found by one or more people within my organisation at some time. Back when I started this site, nearly 4 years ago, I was surprised if I got 3 hits from Google a day. Now I'm getting 3 Google hits a minute. One of them was eventually bound to be someone who knew me.

So now there's a new section of the audience that I have in my mind: people I know, but that might not cool with the tranny thing. I don't know how big that section is, depending on the gossip mill at my organisation it could be anything from 4 to 400 people. They might all be cool with it, I dunno. Hope they are.

I'm going to try to stop it affecting the way I blog and the things I blog about (apart from avoiding blogging about my organisation in explicit terms). At the moment, though, it's hard. Even this blog entry was difficult to put together.

I know, I'll do what public speakers do when intimidated by their audience...

I'm now imagining you all naked.

Torchwood!

Is it the new Bad Wolf? :)

(Thought I'd get in first with that bit of Doctor-Who-Related obscurity.) :-D

Er... hi...

So, I think I have at least one new reader tonight. Someone who's known Simon for quite a few years but only just today found out about "all this".

Hi, thanks for taking it so well, but I knew you would, really. You're the most open-minded Daily Mail reader I know. ;-)

Take a look around. Have a good laugh... I'm not worried about being laughed at because basically, it is funny. If I found out something like this, I'd laugh too. :-)

I'm kind of hoping you're laughing between periods of jaw-dropping amazement!

Oh, and if you have any questions, just ask!

The pursuit of cool

When I started up this blog, I made one pledge to myself:

Do no harm.

Then I realised that doctors had taken first dibs on that pledge, so I came up with another one:

Be original.

Which fitted me better, and had the added advantage of leaving me open to do as much harm as I jolly well liked.

But of course I didn't really actually go so far as to think up a pledge and write it down. It was just there in the back of my mind, what I thought made a good blog and what didn't. Over the time I've imposed on myself a few rough-and-ready rules such as:

• It's not a how-to-write-a-blog site: Don't blog about blogging(oops)


• It's not a link aggregator: Don't just post links to other people's work


• It's just not a place for posting personality quiz results: "I'm the Franco-Prussian War! Find out which German War of Unification you are by clicking here!"


• It's not a diary. I don't want to write about what happened every hour of every day of my life, and I'm pretty sure most people don't want to read it.


• It's not pretty and it's not clever: I'm not a programmer, so the code will be functional rather than whizz-bang, and I'm not a designer, so it's never gonna be a Thing of Beauty.

I am, sometimes, handy with words and I think I can craft something funny when the muse comes to me. So that is what I decided to do, play to my strengths.

Hopefully it works. Rather than falling between the two stools of "aesthetically pleasing" and "technically clever", I made a third stool. A stool for putting the stuff I do on. It's my stool and I like it a lot, thank you.

You see, I realised a some time ago that I'm not cool.

Being a transvestite isn't cool, it might be interesting, sometimes exciting, and it's edging towards socially acceptable. But it's not "cool". If it was then more cool people would do it (or, at least, own up to doing it), but to a fairly great extent they don't.

Neither is having a blog (popular or not) cool. It stopped being even remotely cool sometime around the time Boris Johnson got one.

Being funny isn't cool. Comedians aren't cool. A lot of them became comedians because they weren't cool. Uncoolness is almost a prerequisite.

Being good at programming isn't cool. Even if you write AJAX code on a Mac made out of lemon-scented Buckminsterfullerine. Sorry, it just isn't.

So, the pursuit of coolness through dressing up in ladies clothes, and blogging about it in a funny way with the occasional bit of hamster-related programming thrown in for good measure... is basically pointless.

Coolness is elusive, and it is nice to achieve, but it comes to you, you can't go to it.

What's the point of this post? I don't know. It almost certainly falls foul of at least one of my rules.

It's just something I wanted to say.

The World According to SurfControl

I am no longer Adult!

According to SurfControl's test-a-site:

www.beckysweb.co.uk is in our list
and categorized as Entertainment

In other words: if you're stuck behind a SurfControl content filter at work that blocks "adult" stuff, you can now visit my site!

All thanks to some aggressive campaigning by me.

Well, I filled in a form online.

But I did it aggressively.

Would be nice if someone could independently confirm this. If you're on my site and you couldn't get here before, comment! :-)

It's the Easter weekend...

...and I have absolutely nothing to write about. So I won't. :-)

A Salute to Protea Publishing

I freely admit it, I'm obsessed with Protea Publishing, the vanity publishing guys responsible for unleashing Off the Hook into the world. Every couple of days or so I'm drawn back to the site to peruse their sample covers and look deeper into the other services they provide.

If you're looking for a good thriller, might I recommend:



All the elements of a good yarn: guns, flowers and seedy-looking shops! Let's read the blurb!



"A fast pace novel"? You're telling me. I'm worn out and confused from just reading the dust jacket! Particularly exciting is the guy who turns out to be a bomb! I would have never have seen that one coming. Shame they gave it away on the back cover, really.

I haven't got a copy of the book, but I imagine that chapter would read something like this.

"Oh Arthur, we have to stop meeting outside these darkened shopfronts," said Teresa, idly scraping dried rose petals off her pistol.

"But you know we have to darling," said Arthur. "At least until your new life insurance policy clears. Tick."

"What was that?"

"What was what? Tick."

"You just ticked!"

"No I didn't!" Arthur replied defensively. "You must be hearing things... Tick."

"Arthur, why are you ticking?"

Teresa never heard the answer, as at that moment a pickup schreeched round the corner and began barrelling down the sidewalk towards them. At the wheel was the distinctive smooth and armless silhouette of the Venus De Milo. Teresa shrieked.

The Woman of Statue was back.

Sorry.

I could milk this website goldmine (way to mix metaphors, Bex) for months. I probably will milk it for months, but for now I'm going to finish with a quick look at it's other major highlight: the portrait painting service.

Send them (actually I'm starting to think that Protea might be just one guy) a Polaroid of a loved one and they'll painstakingly reproduce it as a "proper" oil painting.

Recently they must have had a special on for boss-eyed soldiers...



...and...



for example.

I'm sure that they don't really look like that. Well, I hope they don't look like that. Maybe that's what happens to you after a tour of duty in America's forces. They're probably handsome, upstanding war heroes.

One thing for certain, they almost certainly don't deserve me making this when I realised whilst editing the pics that switching between the two quickly was kinda funny.

Mew

I did away with Blogger's comment authentication a while back, and since then I can count on the fingers of one Twix packet the number of spam attacks I've had. Before I turned it on, I was getting quite a few. My theory is that enough people implemented authentication to act as a kind of herd immunity, making it non-viable for the spammers to continue.

Fingers crossed, but if the spammers do come back I'm gonna look to implementing kitten-based authentication, cos who could object to a little game of spot-the-kitty before commenting? :-)

One of the main problems of Blogger's system is that it's not accessible to the blind, which I suppose is true of this system too. That's easily remedied though, just make them mew!

This is dumb

Web 2.0 Validator supposedly tells you how "Web 2.0" your site is, based on a number of criteria. Nice one.

I tried Flickr. It scored 4 out of 41. Oh dear Flickr, you're not very Web 2.0 are you?

So then I tried my site. I scored 6 out of 41.

So it's official: Becky's Web is 50% more "Web 2.0" than Flickr. Yay me!

Pornographr

I went to log into Flickr at work today and was told by our automated net-police that I'd been blocked from visiting a restricted site.

A quick check of the back-end confirmed it. Our web filtering software, SurfControl receives a daily update to it's "internet threat database" of dodgy websites. Today it has decided that Flickr is categorised as "adult/sexually explicit".

For me, this is a worrying sign. Worrying because the Surfcontrol people are right, Flickr is an easy place to get pornographic pictures.

Perhaps because of the rather, er, "specialist" appeal of some of my photos, I get "befriended" by Flickr users whose photo streams are nothing but porn. A lot of it copyrighted material they've pinched off other sites. I've often thought "wow, if I wanted to surf porn at work, Flickr would be a great way to do it." If I've realised it, you can bet a lot of the quick-hand-shandy-in-my-cubicle brigade had realised it too, hence Surfcontrol's decision to stick Flickr on the Naughty list.

A lot of corporate sites use SurfControl, so a lot of innocent people are gonna find their Flickr access curtailed today.

I think Flickr might have some hard decisions to make. Much like Wikipedia, they're now starting to find that the free-and-easy attitudes they adopted when they were a little cult site no longer work now they're a hugely popular Yahoo-backed one. I don't want to see censorship on Flickr, and I really don't know where the lines should be drawn. I do think Flickr have dropped the ball when it comes to copyrighted and adult material.

Behind the cheery, family-friendly public facade of Flickr, a seedy culture of Adult picture-sharing is forming. I think something should be done about it, I'm just not sure what.

Three times an Angel

Yay! For the third year running, my site has won the UK Angels Award for Best Personal Website (UK)!

That's really cool, I hardly ever schmooze my wares on the Angels' forums these days, so to know that my stuff is still known and appreciated by the Angels girls is extra nice.

Looking forward to getting the shiny new gold GIF to stick on my virtual mantlepiece. :-) (Edit: it arrived! If you look carefully it's been placed unobtrusively to the left of this entry.)

Props to Joanna who blagged silver in my category, probably rightfully picking up a few extra votes for all the work she does keeping the Angels sites running too.

Big up also to Kath who netted silver in the international category (the Angels is very UK-centric, so the international category is kinda like Best Foreign Film at the Oscars). In my mind the gold winner, Dani's T-Room, whilst very good, isn't really a personal site, and so Kath Wuz Robbed. But never mind, eh?

Another person getting a silver is Zoe for her great Transgender-Blogs resource, which is really starting to grow. Well done, hon.

Hey, I just thought, if you win a trophy three times in a row, isn't there some kind of rule where you get to keep it? ;-)

It lives!

One of the cool things about blogging is the way that previous blog entries sometimes seem to take on a life of their own; coming back to life long after they've disappeared into the archives.

Take for instance this post from early March, in which I introduced you to the joys of "Off the Hook", a dictionary of African-American street slang, in Japanese.

I'd more-or-less forgotten about it, until new comments started appearing a couple of days ago. It turns out it was picked up by Japundit, a rather fabulous blog about Japanese culture. It then got bounced around a couple of other Japanophile blogs.

There are some fascinating comments on the original blog entry now, I especially enjoyed this rather lengthy one explaining the apparent Japanese fascination for Black American culture. It's really nice when you can learn something from your own blog!

On the subject of Previous Posts that Will Not Die, back in January I had a good old-fashioned rant about Sky's customer service (which got resolved by the way - I sent them a snotty letter and they gave me nearly 3 months of free viewing). It seems to have become a min-forum for airing Sky grievances, about once a month someone adds a comment. Even an anonymous Sky employee!

12 Months Later

So yes, the T*Blog is a year old today. I thought you might like a bit of an insight into the creative process behind the creation of an icon such as this. Luckily, I try to save all the scraps of paper, restaurant napkins, police holding cell walls etc that I scribble on. Hopefully these will keep me in my dotage.

So here's something from the day I decided on the name and design of the blog. Hope you find it enlightening!

It was...

Early 2005. The tranny blogosphere was very much like Britain in the mid-70s. Drab, bland and depressing, with only the occasional crazed punk to brighten things up...

but then...

How to dual-boot your gender

Most boys who have been provided with the standard BoyOS, assume they can’t use software and peripherals designed for girl platforms. However, with a little effort it is possible to dual-boot in both BoyOS and GirlOS mode, and this guide is designed to help you achieve this.

What you will need
BoyOS 2.x (New Man edition or later)
A Boy platform with several kilomonths of unused free time.
Lots and lots of money.

Step 1: Partitioning
Firstly you will need to partition your life.

To dual-boot your gender you will need to create 2 partitions, once for BoyOS and one for GirlOS. Most users who initially decide to dual-boot prefer to make the GirlOS secret to avoid potential conflicts. In the second partition you will keep all of the software and peripherals related to GirlOS.

You may decide to purchase extra storage for your GirlOS software. Locked suitcases hidden in the attic serve well for this purpose.

Initially this GirlOS partition will be quite small, although you will find it grows over time. With some systems it can grow to be much larger than the BoyOS partition.

Step 2: Purchasing Software
Now that you have an empty GirlOS partition, you will need to fill it with some initial software. Most Boy platforms don’t have any GirlOS software pre-installed, so you will need to purchase it online or from high-street vendors.

It is worth noting that most high-street stores do not support GirlOS software running on a Boy platform. You may find it easier to pretend to be buying the software for a friend or relative who uses the Girl platform. Many people these days prefer to avoid high-street shopping and use online software providers.

For people used to BoyOS, purchasing software suitable for GirlOS can be a potential minefield. Firstly, it is important to purchase software suitable for the age of the platform on which it should be run, many dual-booters fall into the trap of purchasing software designed for much newer systems.

Secondly, Girl OS uses a completely different sizing nomenclature to BoyOS, which can cause problems. Although conversion tables are available, it’s often a case of “trial and error” to find GirlOS software that fits on your Boy platform.

Other potential sources of GirlOS software are abandonware, which is available from locations such as bags destined for charity shops. Also, if  you share a house with someone running on the Girl platform you might be tempted to investigate shareware, but be very careful when doing this.


Step 3: Installing Software
Once you have bought the necessary GirlOS software, you will need to install it. Note that initially the Boy platform will not be prepared to accept software designed for GirlOS, and will need to be formatted. Specialist suppliers such as Gillette, Wilkinson and Veet can provide you with the tools to do this.

Once the platform has been formatted correctly you are ready to install GirlOS software! The best advice here is to take it slow, and be prepared to make mistakes. You may find that some of the software you have purchased is completely unsuitable for your platform, or that when installed just not function in the way you’d expect a GirlOS system to work. Do not be afraid to throw away software that you just can’t get to run on your platform.

However, once you have managed to successfully dual-boot your gender, you’ll feel a great sense of achievement! You’ll probably want to post  pictures online of your platform running GirlOS to show off to people. They’re sure to be impressed, and if you’re really lucky they won’t even realise that underneath you’re running on a Boy platform!

Advanced Techniques
Some people find they are so satisfied with GirlOS that they decide to lose BoyOS altogether. This requires quite drastic firmware modifications that are beyond the scope of this guide.

Four words that will strike terror into anyone wanting to do anything over the next two weeks.

The kids are off.

(At least, they are around my way.)

Albedo

...was the word I was trying to think of whist sat watching a boring presentation this morning (once I’d exhausted the diversionary potential of picking tell-tell bits of gold varnish off my fingernails).

The projector had been set up a bit low, so that the green Windows XP “Start” button was emblazoned across the seated presenter’s completely bald and exceptionally shiny pate.

I wish the word had come to me during the presentation. It would have been nice to congratulate him afterwards for having “a very good albedo”.

The X stands for Mission

Jane and I went to Trans-Mission last night, which was nice. The great thing about TX is I can almost guarantee bumping into at least a couple of good friends. Last night was no exception. Connie and partner Tracy, Clarissa, and Joanna were all there, to name but a few! It was nice to catch up properly, particularly with Connie and Tracy, who I've not really had a chance to have a proper chinwag with before... babes, I'm sorry we dragged you both to the diner afterwards when it turned out you weren't hungry! But you were great company. :-)

Vicky and Jasmine put on a top night, as per usual and to be expected when TX is getting near it's 50th outing. They had a few problems with the new owners of the venue not providing enough bar staff, but those kinds of things are pretty much beyond control, and I know that after Jasmine has had some choice words with the manager they'll be up to scratch next month!

Wow, what a remarkably utilitarian blog entry this is! I suppose I should go the whole hog and mention that the resurfacing works on the M11 made for a very slow journey back, and that it rained heavily, and we didn't get back till 5...

but that would be boring, so I'll end with the only decent pic I have of me from last night.

Not on my watch!

I might have mentioned recently that the King's Lynn town centre has undergone a bit of a facelift over the last year? We now have a TK Maxx, and (shock horror) a Cafe Nero!

It turns out the fun doesn't end there, though!

I was wandering through the town centre last night and saw this in the window of one of the yet-to-be opened boutiques.



A quick chat with the avuncular security guard standing nearby confirmed my worst fears. "It's one of them shops for perverts what dress up like ladies."

In my home town!

I know we're the Tranny Capital of the Fens, but please anything but this! I'm planning a series of pickets, starting today. Please email me if you'd like to attend.