Razor Burns

One was former Millwall player, the other a gender-bending eighties popster. I guess the producers of Celebrity Wife Swap expected the sparks to fly when they threw Neil "Razor" Ruddock and Pete Burns together, but what emerged was a bit of a love-in.

I watched because I kinda admire Pete Burns, despite the fact he doesn't identify himself as a transvestite. I admire him for going all out to look how he wants, even though it's far further than I'd go myself.

What was billed as car-crash telly was actually quite gentle, even if it was as if a hackneyed sitcom writer had scripted it so everyone went on a "journey" and "learnt something about themselves". The slobbish husband revealed his gentle side, the ex glamour-model wife found a new confidence, and helped Pete's photographer husband find his, and bar some rather forced bitching everyone seemed to get on like a house on fire. It was all pretty heartwarming.

Watch it on 4oD while you can, it's not bad.

It's official

Spider

In case you're wondering why you've been subjected to this, the relevant formula is: "shaky footling about with new camcorder" + "new version of iMovie" + "questionable music taste" + "bored Friday evening on my own".

How do you like them apples?

I love English apples, and really look forward to this time of year when the Cox's Orange Pippins reappear in the shop. They're possibly the most delicious fruit ever made. That bloke Cox was a genius, even if he couldn't tell an orange from an apple.

So when my Granddad asked if I'd like him to get me some when he went apple picking at a nearby orchard, I eagerly said yes.

Perhaps a little too eagerly. My granddad, as I may have mentioned before, doesn't do things by halves. This was on our doorstep when I got home today:



About a treesworth (official measurement for apples, I checked) of Cox's. And another bag of its tart cooking cousin, the Bramley.

Er... apple jam anyone?

Do you see the world in black and white?

You might say you're fine with fat people, or you're not in any way racist, or you're open-minded about sexuality, but how do you actually react to different types of person? For example, are you implicitly racist, but consciously (or unconsciously) make an effort to act in a non-racist manner? I stumbled across this site today, which attempts to answer these questions.

Through a series of "either or" tests, it attempts to tease out the implicit attitudes we have towards people from the way we think we think about them.

For example I discovered after taking one of the tests that I appear to have an implicit preference for white faces against black faces. This, I hope you'll understand, doesn't make me racist, I'm probably just programmed in a way I can't really control to prefer faces that look like mine. I'm quite proud that I'm intelligent enough to not let this programming rule my behaviour. It would be far worse, I think, to have no implicit preference but act in a racist manner.

Give the tests a try yourself, you might find it as interesting as I did!

Behold the Uberfeed

I set this up ages ago, but never bothered to promote it. If you're a die-hard Beckysweb fan, and you'd like to keep track of all my blog posts, and my occasional "Quite Interesting Things" links, and my latest Flickr pictures, you can subscribe to The UberFeed in your favourite blog reader. It includes all of the aforementioned content and cures athlete's foot!

You've never had it so good!

Apologies in advance

... succulent mounds of Danish butternut squash, spanked mercilessly by flanks of extra mature prime Aberdeen Angus steak...

... lush nubile English pears, tightly bound in thin yet unyeilding straps of dark Dutch liquorice ...

... mouthwatering thighs of farm-reared chicken, cruelly shackled inside a cramped cage of organic Chinese spare ribs ...

This isn't just food...

...this is S&M food.

"Exclusive Yarns"! Of course!

YES! Well found, Tidy! Brilliant! That show I trying to find was called "Exclusive Yarns"!! The link you found is describing a stage play version that was apparently made a few years ago, and the reviewer doesn't seem to realise that it was originally a TV drama (he even says it would have worked better on the small screen), but it matches exactly with the show I remember. The reviewer even makes the same comparison with "Acorn Antiques" that I did. IMDB's brief description mentions it starred Maureen Lipman, Lesley Joseph ("Dorien" from Birds of a Feather) and Patricia "Keeping up Appearances" Hodge, which I'd forgotten, but they fit perfectly.

That's really put my mind at rest!

Dimly remembered tranny-related shows

I've forgotten more telly shows from my youth than I remember, but the ones that had a "tranny element" tend to stick in the mind, long after the name of the show, or even the plot, has faded.

For some reason a bizarre British drama (or possibly comedy) I remember seeing as a teenager popped into my head yesterday, and I'd really like to find out what it was called. It's almost impossible to Google about, so perhaps it will ring some bells with you.

From what I recall, it was partly about a fictional soap opera set in a wool shop run by a group of ladies of the type who run wool shops. Think Acorn Antiques, but with balls of wool instead of antiques. But this was just the "show within the show", the actual drama was about a bunch of furtive middle-aged trannies who "reenacted" the show in a mock-up of the wool-shop set made in one of the tranny's houses. In the "real" shop had a wall of cubby-holes filled with multi-coloured balls of wool, the fake one was painted to the same effect.

The drama (or comedy... it may have been a comedy) revolved around these strange trannies gaining a "kick" from role-playing the female characters in the soap, and I seem to remember one plot involving jealousy over who got to play which character.

So there you have it... actual details may have been different from how I recall it, but it did exist and it's not just a figment of my fevered imaginings. Any ideas?

Also fixed

More good news, Fasthosts (my sometimes crappy web host) have fixed the problem with their servers which meant they couldn't see the outside world. Therefore all my bits of code that relied on that feature (the Live Blogroll, the flickr feeds) are now working again!

I know of at least two people who use the Live Blogroll as an off-the-peg blog aggregator, apologies for the break in service!

Ahhh...

That's better. It's nice to be back!

Back to my customary blogging pose, that is. Slouched on the couch with MacBook Pro. Due to this happening for the second time to my magsafe power adapter, I've been Macless for over a week.

Jane and I have got used to being a two-CPU family, and sharing the single desktop has been a real trial. 

The trouble is that Magsafe connectors don't grow on trees, and as my second one was out of warranty I had to buy a replacement. I ordered one from Apple, which arrived mid-week. It was then I discovered that Apple make two different types of MacBook Magsafe connectors: one for MacBooks, and one for MacBook Pros.

Guess which one I'd bought. Clue: It's now winging its way back to Apple.

The "funny" thing is that the lady who served me today in the Apple shop in Cambridge was also unaware of this fact. If I hadn't already been tripped up once, I would have walked out of the shop with a completely unsuitable piece of kit, despite carefully describing to her what model of Mac I was using, and even the wattage of adapter I required.

Anyway, no harm done! Well, apart from the boring blog entry you've had to suffer. ;-)

And now it's time for the Gallery

Hello! We here at Beckysweb always like it when you send in your creative stuff inspired by things you've seen on the blog. Following on to our post about diversifying the blog into several "channels", a big parcel landed electronically in our "e-postbag" today from web designer Kristina Roberts, who writes:

I had a couple of hours and I couldn't resist. Here is how your new
blogs could be branded... ;)

Thanks Kristina, these are fantastic! I love the sliced eBeckysweb one, and you've really captured my features in the THREE one! A coveted Beckysweb badge is winging its way to you! (Although I read now that you live in Amsterdam, and I only stuck a second class stamp on it, so you might get charged extra when it arrives).

Meanwhile, 24 hours earlier

Look, I did go out!

A picture taken in the Campanile Bathroom before I went out to Pink Punters, and Jane and I hooked up with Siobhan,, Joanna and Isobel.

You can tell this picture was taken on the night before, because I'm a lot less baggy-eyed than I was in the pictures I took last night.

Learn French with Becky

New words on this page: Boudoir. Cliché.

Cute thoughts

A bit broken

You may have noticed that Beckysweb is in slightly reduced circumstances this evening. I've had to take emergency action and get rid of some of the bits that link to feeds from elsewhere, as they seem not to be working at the moment. So no flickr pics, and no live blogroll. Hopefully normal service should be resumed soon.

Shocked and appalled

I suppose I should write about the weekend, but due to one thing and another (one thing being my MacBook power supply going kaput, the other being me spending yesterday evening prancing about in a dress and taking pictures*) I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Partly due to my laptop being out of action, I've also been unable to reply properly to this comment from "SunFlowerBreeze" on an an ancient blog post of mine, accusing me, among other things, of wishing for a "perfect little fantasy world [where] everyone would look like a model".

I don't really have to reply. After all, that post is over a year old and the page hardly gets any traffic these days, so no-one would probably even read it if I hadn't just pointed it out.

But, coincidentally this morning I read the perfect reply, in Charlie Brooker's excellent weekly Guardian column.

"I hate offended people. They come in two flavours - huffy and whiny - and it's hard to know which is worst. The huffy ones are self-important, narcissistic authoritarians in love with the sound of their own booming disapproval, while the whiny, sparrowlike ones are so annoying and sickly and ill-equipped for life on Earth you just want to smack them round the head until they stop crying and grow up. Combined, they're the very worst people on the planet - 20 times worse than child molesters, and I say that not because it's true (it isn't), but because it'll upset them unnecessarily, and these readers deserve to be upset unnecessarily, morning, noon and night, every sodding day, for the rest of their wheedling lives."

Hear hear. All that I'd really need to add to that in my reply to SunFlowerBreeze is "I wasn't insulting the soldiers, I was insulting the shitty artist who painted those pictures. And if they really were supposed to be some kind of tribute to soldiers who had died in action, then it's the artist who has insulted their memories by painting such awful portraits. So you've got no reason to be 'shocked and appalled', unless it's due to the following sentence in which I quite unnecessarily call you an imbecile. Oh, and one more thing, that's not how you spell 'regardless', imbecile."

Anyway, back to my perfect little fantasy world. If the Royal Mail deliver the power supply for my laptop today, I'll post some pics of me looking like a model tonight!

I'll let you decide which part of the last sentence was the fantasy.

*I know! Me in a dress! At home! With no intention of going out! Taking pictures! It's almost impossible to believe!

Diversification

I realised today that I'm being terribly old-fashioned by only having one blog. In this modern age, with the bandwidth available, I could have hundreds!

So, from Monday, I'll be launching several new services:

Becky's T-Blog+1
All the content from Beckys's Blog, one hour later! Never miss the chance to be the first to read a post again!

Becky's eBlog
Nothing but clippings of news stories about Big Brother all summer. Then pop videos from YouTube all winter.

Becky's Blog Gold
Basically re-posts of old material from the last couple of years.

Becky's Blog 3
Brand new sexy content!

Becky's Blog 1
A re-branding of my existing blog. Will basically repeat stuff that's popular on Becky's Blog 3.

Becky's Blog 2
See Becky's Blog 1.

And the great thing is, I can create all these new blogs, without having to create any more content than I do already!

Isn't diversification a wonderful thing?

Being Talked About

For those who came in late, a brief update. I'm a transvestite, and I'm "out" to all of my friends and close family. During the last couple of years I've also semi-outed myself at work, during a series of deliberate revelations, accidental discoveries and hurried damage-limitation exercises.

The accidental discoveries haven't been due to me absent-mindedly turning up to work in a dress, they've mainly be down to that scourge of the modern age: Messrs. Google and their all-pervasive search engine! Don't they realise, dammit, that I'm only putting my entire life on-line in easily accessible web-based formats for my own benefit; and I don't want their dirty Googlebot grubbing through my private affairs and broadcasting them to the world!?

The problem with being semi-out at work is that I'm not sure who knows I'm a tranny and who doesn't know. And even when I know someone knows that I'm a tranny, I'm not always sure that they know that I know they know. Because although I know they know, we've never talked about it. It's not the kind of thing that comes up in discussion about intranet improvements... you know.

But equally, having people at work who know, and know that I know means that I sometimes get to know when I'm Being Talked About. This isn't, actually, that bad a thing. A famous person that I CBATG once said something along the lines of "it's better to be talked about than not talked about". Although he probably said it better than that. It was most likely Wilde, these things usually are.

I think my impending marriage is a source of fevered speculation at the moment. My close work colleague (who knows, and knows I know he knows... and alright I'll stop now) has been quizzed at least once about it. People want to know if Jane knows, although quite how they think I'd be able (let alone want) to hide it from her when it's common knowledge in most circles is beyond me.

I think I can also identify the people who know because they're the ones that, when I tell them, seem surprised that I'm getting married at all.

"You're getting married? What, to a woman?? Er, I mean... congratulations!"

Although to be fair, their incredulity might be at the concept of male IT worker actually knowing a member of the opposite sex. Which is down to a completely different set of prejudices!

That's not to say I feel prejudiced against as a tranny at work. I have a feeling that even the people who know but I don't know that they know whould like to talk to me about it, because they're basically cool and groovy about it. They just don't know how (or when) to approach it.

Perhaps I should have some kind of amnesty. :-)

Thailand

Thanks for indulging me. ;-)

Brains

Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Autumn (or "Fall" if you're American and prefer your equinoxes to be monosyllabic) always takes me by surprise.

This morning walking to work, it was Autumn. Last week it was Summer. The sun was shining just as much as last week, it was just as warm, the trees were only imperceptably less green, but there was a quality to the light, a nuance to the air. It felt like Autumn.

The weird thing is, it's hard to pin down why. I couldn't point to any one thing that made it feel like autumn. Perhaps little things like the length of the shadows and the smell of the leaves were being registered subconsciously by my primitive caveman brain, telling it that it's time to stop sunbathing on the hot rocks and go check to see how many nuts the cave-women has stockpiled.

The other weird thing is that every year I forget what Autumn feels like. Which is kind of nice. Every year it's a pleasant surprise to be reminded of it. Pleasant, that is, until Autumn delivers it's payload of crappy weather and long cold nights.

But that's still to come. At the moment I welcome Autumn back like an old friend. And old friend who'd I'd forgotten how nice it is to be with.

Breastage

Knob

High Street shopping

A lot of my recent shopping trips for Becky have been unsuccessful. As I've said before, last year's trend for bold prints in ghastly colours did absolutely nothing for me. So I've been really pleased to see a funkier metallic and punky vibe coming in with the autumn fashions.

Jane and I took a trip into town today, ostensibly to look for clothes to take on honeymoon in the outgoing summer sales, but also to look for something to wear next weekend at Angelic. I've always felt more comfortable buying stuff on the High Street, as opposed from out of catalogues. I just find the "hit rate" a bit better, even if I'm nearly always shopping in Boy Mode and never try things on.

We started off in the Matalan on the outskirts of town, which used to occasionally have some great deals but now seems to be suffering from everyone copying their cheap-as-chips clothes and homewares aesthetic. Although I did find a couple of nice short-ish skirts (one black, one a kind of tweed), and a roasting dish (er, for lasagnes, not as some kind of fashion statement).

Then it was on to the High Street proper. We skimmed through Next (still trying to flog last year's fashions) and River Island (better, but not much), and spent a bit longer in Dorothy Perkins, which had some great stuff in the window that didn't seem to be sold anywhere in the shop. Don't you hate that?

Then we tried Top Shop (maybe after a bit more dieting) and MKone (better, but nothing "sang" to me) and I was beginning to think that maybe I wasn't going to have any luck. Then we popped into Peacocks where Jane spotted a fab black asymmetric top with a chain shoulder detail and silver motif which just "said Becky" to her, and I agreed immediately.

Feeling bolstered by this find we went on to New Look, and by now it was Jane's turn to feel unblessed by the Shopping Fairy, with nothing really catching her eye. I however was in the Zone, and found a fabulous gold-flecked dress in the "tall" section and quickly matched it with a wide gold stretchy belt and a gold necklace.

The trip finished in Sainsbury's. While I made a start on the week's shopping list, Jane popped in to their clothes department, emerging a few minutes later clutching a small bag and grinning from ear to ear. She'd found a fab shawl/scarf in a tasteful leopard print that suited her to a tee. Only a few pounds in the sale, but I would have paid £100 to see that smile. :-)

So I'm now two outfits ahead of the game, which means we can have a casual shop around Milton Keynes next weekend without having to panic about what I'm going to wear that night. Excellent!

Foom

Satan's Weekend Place

Don't use the H word

Jane and I will both be at Pink Punters near Milton Keynes on the 15th of September, partly for Angelic, and partly to unofficially joinly celebrate the end of our singleton existences.

In a totally non-hen-night type way. That means no "funny" L plates, no matching t-shirts, no obviously fake policeman strippers, and no drinking until we're ill.

Okay, maybe the last one.

Basically if you're in the mood to partake in an old-school Tranny Night Out (even if you don't dress in the cross manner yourself) and you can make it along, come and say hi! We'd love to see you.

Google, ye know too much!!

By chance I discovered this strange tool in Google Labs this evening. Called "Google Sets", it's basically a clever little online gadget that suggests larger sets of things based on the examples you give.

So, you might type in (as I did) words like "apple", "banana", "orange", "pear", "plum". At it does it's quasi-AI thing and churns out words like "grapefruit", "apricot", "melon", etc.

So far, so "hmm interesting but pretty pointless".

I guessed Google was getting these sets of words by mining it's enormous search database, so I thought I'd see just how clever it is. I thought I'd see if it could predict tranny names, based on a small random set of names of me and some friends.

I typed in: Joanna, Siobhan, Becky, Isobel, Stephanie.

It generated: clarissa, jane, connie, alex, penny, pandora, chrissy, gillian, laura

At which point I generated: "eep".

That isn't just a random set of names, it's a set of people that I know quite well. Apart from Alex, but that strangely makes the whole thing more creepy, it's not just like Google went and found a list I'd written somewhere that included those 5 names. And I'm pretty sure that there's nowhere online that all those words are written down together. So it's done some kind of freaky AI mojo and worked out that those names "belong" together because they crop up together quite often. Spook!

Google credo may be "don't be evil", but it still manages to scare the hell out of me from time to time.

Needs must

Jane was late home this evening, but she had a surprise for me. She'd made a special trip to the shops to replace my poor dead iPod.

:-)

Gadget fate

I've been idly contemplating getting a new iPod for a while now, but my trusty 3G 20GB model did everything I need, really. I couldn't justify upgrading.

Well, I could justify it in my own head, but I wasn't able to make cohesive arguments to others.

About 2 hours ago my iPod went kaput. Dead. It's making banging noises and no amount of reformatting is working.

About 5 minutes ago I learned that Apple have announced brand new iPods.

God they look sexy...

...Jane's never going to believe this when she gets home. :-/

Six Degrees of Wedding Panic

Me: In fact, I think I could play Six Degrees of Wedding Panic with virtually any word you care to mention at the moment. Go on, try me!

steph_angel: Glamorgan...

Ok, here goes...

Glamorgan... Wales... Cardiff... Dr. Who... 

The Runaway Bride ... Weddings ... PANIC!!

C'mon, that was obvious! ;-) Anyone else?

New thinking

Jane: I want to know about "thought research".

Thought Research, as I have explained briefly before, is analogous to the philosophical and scientific technique of the "thought experiment".

With a thought experiment, a scientist or philosopher imagines hypothetical situations (which would often be impossible to recreate in real life) in order to gain a better understanding of reality.

Probably the most famous thought experiment is the one known as "Schrödinger's Cat", in which the physicist Edwin Schrödinger envisaged a situation in which a cat was placed in a box with a vial of poison connected to a radioactive source which may or may not decay. Edwin used the imaginary situation to answer a scientific conundrum that would be impossible using real experimentation, in this case the question "what's the best way to really piss off a cat?".

The technique of Thought Research, which I have developed, is broadly similar to thought experimentation. Take for example,that previous paragraph on Schrödinger's Cat. Another person writing such a paragraph might have used resources such as encyclopedias or scientific journals in order to make sure they got their "facts" right. But it might surprise you to learn that I based my piece entirely on Thought Research.

After thought researching and writing that paragraph, I then went to Wikipedia in order to compare it to a more classically researched item. I found that my piece differed in only two points. Firstly, the actual point of the Schrödinger experiment was something complicated to do with quantums, and secondly that apparently his name was Erwin, not Edwin. Both are anomolies so minor they can be counted as statistically neglible.

So as you have seen, thought research leads to equally revelatory findings as real research, and takes considerably less time and effort. However, in some quarters it has been derided as "unscientific" and "patently ludicrous". The worst critics have often been people who have findings based on Thought Research used against them in an argument.

"Where did you hear that rubbish?" Janethe other party would exclaim, and when I would reply that it was based on extensive Thought Research the argument would descend into petty name-calling and rudeness. At which point I always declare the argument void and myself the winner.

I confidently predict that I will go down in the annals of history as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. Much like Steve Einstein, the Descartes sisters, and the man who invented the internal trouser pocket.