Open for comment

Comment on my blog today and you might notice a few new choices for saying who you are. I've enabled options for AIM, Wordpress, and other online identities, as well as OpenID, the fab-and-groovy decentralised identity system that will (as more and more sites accept it) follow you around the web and not tie you down to individual providers. If OpenID takes off, it could see the end of remembering hundreds of different IDs for different websites. We can only hope.

For those of you thinking "yes but Becky, you've not written much to comment about anyway", I say "how dare you! I'd like to see you do better! My God, the absolute gall!"

Oh, and the drop in frequency on entries is partially due to me writing a rather massive thing that should grace this site before Christmas. I've learnt my lesson from posting the first part of new stuff and then never getting round to finishing it, so this time I'm going to get it all done first and then post it. Genius, eh?

The eyes have it

As I might have said before, one of the things that really flicks my tranny switches is makeup. I've got an almost epicurean lust for eyeshadows and lipsticks, so much so that (in some kind of bizarre variation of a Pavlovian response) looking around M.A.C counters makes me hungry.

I love experimenting with colours and shading techniques, and I'm always looking for new ideas, which is what made Jody's The Magic's in the Makeup blog such a fantastic find!

(Via Zoe's Transgender Blog)

In case the Today program don't pick up this story...

Cross dressers attack Memphis McDonald's workers

"As the fight carried on, the manager grabbed a pot of hot French fry grease and launched it at the men. One of the men retaliated, smacking the manager in the head with a wet floor sign sending him away in an ambulance."

No, don't laugh.

They said it would never last! Etc.

One month anniversary toda... er... yesterday!

I am now entitled to spiel out clichéd anniversary comments.

Tch! One month eh? You don't get that for, um, assault.

The Mystery Fondue Set

Ow... hand cramp. Why is it that when I was a kid I was able to knock out reams of handwritten material with barely more than a callous on my finger, but these days a few minutes with a pen leaves me in agony? Probably the fact that I never pick up a pen other than to do the crossword or buy stuff at Argos.

The cramp has been brought on by writing out thank-you cards to everyone who bought us a gift for the wedding. Once again John Lewis has been a godsend (gah... how lower middle class am I?) by sending us big long lists of who bought what.

Which is fine when people fill in the "from" box with their names. When they (deliberately or by accident) fill it in with "Jane and Simon" rather than their own names, it makes it somewhat vexing. Unless we brought ourselves a fondue set and then wiped our own memories, which I somehow doubt.

So we know someone bought us a lovely fondue set (no really, we wanted one, it's really nice), but we don't know who and I'm worried that they don't realise we don't know, and will think we're horribly ungrateful for not saying thanks.

There's an off chance that it's someone who reads my blog, hence the plea. Who is the Phantom Fondue Buyer? Answers to the email address if you wish to maintain your anonymity!

One less thing to worry about

Great news everyone! After 30 year's deliberation, I've finally decided which princess I want to be.

This one.



I want that dress. I want to look like that in that dress.

Leaving aside trivial considerations of age, gender and taste, is that so wrong? :-/

By the way, does anyone fancy a tranny night out to go see Enchanted when it comes out in the UK? The trailer actually looks quite good.

Oi, Grendel! No!!

We'd just finished making a dent in the Christmas shopping list in Norwich, and we were at a bit of a loose end, so we decided to go see a film at Castle Mall. The only thing that was on at a suitable time was "Beowulf"...

...which I actually rather enjoyed. The computer graphics were incredibly impressive, they've almost perfected making things look genuinely real, except for something about the eyes that gave everyone a slightly dead mannequin-like quality.

Being a complete philistine, I've never bothered to read the original epic poem (for one thing I suspect it doesn't even rhyme!) so I can't comment on how accurate Neil Gaiman's adaptation of it was. There were some elements that reminded me of Gaiman's novels, but that might be more due to Beowulf's influence on Gaiman's work rather that vice-versa.

There was some humour, both intentional and unintentional. I can't imagine that the fact Grendel's mum's slinky nearly-nude molten gold outfit came with integral stilettos was accidentally funny. But I think maybe the creators didn't expect Ray Winstone's cockney geezer growl coming out of the buff toned body of a legendary Scandinavian hero to be quite so amusing. For one thing Beowulf looked absolutely nothing like Ray, whereas nearly all of the other film avatars looked almost identical to their actor counterparts. Also, I kept expecting Ray to throw in some classic cockney hard-man lines.

"Shut it Unferth, you slaaaaaag!"

Access Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and other IM clients from within iChat

Apple's instant messaging client, iChat, is elegant and easy to use, and with OS X Leopard, Apple have added direct support for Google Talk. This makes it possible (with a little effort) to consolidate ALL of your instant messaging accounts (Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ, etc.) into iChat.

Once you've integrated your accounts into iChat, you can then make use of it's enhanced integration with other Apple apps such as Mail and Address Book. For example, if Joe Bloggs sends you an email, Apple Mail will show you whether he's online or not, even though Joe is only available via his Yahoo Messenger account.

Another benefit of combining all your IM accounts into Google Talk is that the chat functionality in Gmail becomes cross-platform too. You can log into Gmail from anywhere and instantly access all your chat buddies in MSN Messenger, Yahoo, AIM, etc.

The basic steps are:

1. set up a Gmail Account (with Google Talk)
2. use Psi to add external Jabber transports for Yahoo and MSN messenger to the Gmail Account
3. configure iChat to access the Google Talk account
4. then map the addresses in iChat to items in the Address Book

I got this working over the weekend, based on several different online guides and my own research, but I thought it might be useful to put all the information in one place for anyone who might want to try this themselves.

Step 1
Firstly, you will need a Gmail account, if you've not got one already. Just go to the Gmail site and choose the "Sign up for Google Mail" link. Once you've chosen your google user name, this will be your Gmail address and also the login name for Google Talk. Make a note of your gmail address as you will use it later on to log into the Jabber service. Usually gmail addresses end @gmail.com, but in the UK and elsewhere it may end in @googlemail.com. Your gmail address is shown at the top right of the screen when you log in.

Step 2
Google Talk uses a protocol called Jabber, which is a protocol supported by iChat. Unfortunately iChat doesn't include all the Jabber functionality we need to set up additional IM services (called Transports). However, we can use another IM application called Psi, available free here, to configure Google Talk.

Once you've dowloaded and run PSI, go to the "General" menu and choose "Account Setup". Then add a new account with the following settings:

Name: Google Talk
Jabber ID: the same as your Gmail address from step 1
Password: the same as your Gmail password

Save the settings and close the account creation screen. The Google Talk login will now appear in the PSI window, but not logged on. Right-click on the Google Talk account in the list and choose Status > Online, this should log you into Google Talk.

A list of available contacts will appear, if this is your first time using Google Talk you'll probably just see your own name.

Step 3
Now we need to add the additional transports to Google for any other IM services we use. To do this, right click on the "Google Talk" account in Psi's main window and choose "Service Discovery".

Natively Google Talk only supports one service, Google Talk itself. But we can add transports from other Jabber servers, of which there are hundreds. I use jabber.freenet.de, but you can get a list of available open Jabber servers here.

Before you go on, go to Psi > Preferences, click on the Events tab and check "Auto-authorize contacts". This will save time later on, as otherwise all the contacts you already have on other IM services will individually require authorising by Psi.

In the address field of the Service Discovery dialog in Psi, type jabber.freenet.de and click "Browse", a list of the supported transports will appear, including MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM etc. Choose a transport for which you have a chat account, right-click on it and choose "Register", and provide your user name and password for that service.

If you've given the right user name and password, Psi should add that service as a Transport, and populate the list with all your contacts from that service. The names might look a little ugly at the moment as Jabber uses a special format to uniquely identify the user and the transport that it users. So a user called "somebody" using hotmail as their MSN messenger account ID might appear as somebody%hotmail.com@msn.jabber.freenet.de, a bit of a mouthful! Luckily we can fix this in iChat later on.

Do the same thing with your other IM clients. I've tried this with MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger accounts, but it should work with any transports that have Jabber transports.

Step 4
You can now if you wish use Psi as your chat client, but only reason we downloaded it was to use it's Service Discovery function. Quit Psi and fire up iChat.

In the preferences for iChat, go to Accounts and click the plus button to add a new account. If you're using OSX Leopard, simply choose "Google Talk Account" and provide your Google Account name (your Gmail address) and password. If you're using Tiger, you can still access Google Talk using iChat's Jabber protocol, using these instructions from Google.

Once you've added your Google account, you should see exactly the same contacts list as you saw in PSI, complete with the dodgy-looking buddy names. To make these into "friendly" names, choose a name from the list and click on "Show Info" in the Buddies menu. If that contact has an entry in your Address Book, you can link to their address book card from here. Their Jabber address will be added to their other details on their address book. You'll also be able to see their online status in Mail when they email you.

If you don't have an address book entry for that person, you can either create one now or simply type in the name of the person in the fields provided. iChat will then display this name rather than the one Jabber provides.

That's it!

Becky
AIM/iChat: theinactivist
YIM: beckyenverite

Study in Yellow and Blue

So I finally got round to uploading some holiday snaps of Fuerteventura to Flickr...



1. Froth, 2. View from our balcony, 3. Roque del Moro, 4. Pajara Church, 5. Morro de La Cruz, 6. Cityscape, 7. Distant windmill, 8. Casa de los Coroneles, 9. Casa de los Coroneles window, 10. High Dynamic (Mountain) Range, 11. Casa de los Coroneles chapel, 12. Desertscape, 13. Sandforms, 14. Atlantic, 15. Jandia Peninsula, 16. Jandia Sotavento Playa

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Black-Tie Radiation

Geddit?

Blink

If you'd have asked me yesterday morning "what's the least likely thing you'd expect to be doing at about 11 o-clock this evening?" I'd have probably said something like "wandering around a deserted Doctor Who exhibition in Leicester... in a dinner jacket."

But, remarkably, that's exactly how I came to take this picture.

The boss wandered into the office yesterday and announced that due to illness there was a last-minute space on a corporate "Thanks for Giving Us All Your Money" formal dinner jolly in Leicester, and anyone who could scrub up at short notice was welcome to fill it. As the only person in the office that owned a DJ, I was a shoo-in.

The venue was the National Space Centre, in Leicester, an inspired choice by the company laying on the do. After a meal amongst giant model planets and Soyuz capsules, we were allowed to wander the centre and play with the exhibits or dance in a disco laid on in the "universe" room.

I remembered a sign I'd seen on the way in, and wandered off away from the main party. Taking a chance with what appeared to be a fire exit, found a brand new exhibit of costumes and props from Doctor Who season 3.

Sometimes owning formal wear really pays off.

Post Nuptials

The register office in King's Lynn is based in a wonderful old Hanseatic warehouse on the riverside. The room they use for most of the ceremonies is a beautiful oak beamed chamber. We were married there by the Registrar, an avuncular chap called Colin, who said it was the first time he'd actually presided over a ceremony. There's some debate as to whether he was actually telling the truth or not, Jane thinks he might have just said it as a joke, but he had only worked there less than a year it seems an odd thing to say to a nervous couple!

Newbie or not, we couldn't have hoped for a better person presiding. He gave the proceedings exactly the right mix of lightheartedness and gravitas, I was really chuffed. Although neither Jane or I are religious and didn't want a church service, we didn't feel at all like we experienced a less significant event than we would have had at any church you care to mention.

I got through my reading without blubbing (just a little crack in my voice near the end), and generally everything went swimmingly.

And then we were married.



And then there were more photos, and congratulations, and sparkly drinks, and everything speeded up to a blur.

The lunch with the wedding party was excellent (I heartily recommend Bradley's if you're ever after a good meal or a nice glass or so of wine in the West Norfolk area).

And then there were speeches and things. Some of which were rather embarrassing. But nice.

By the time the evening reception came around we really felt that things had gone perfectly, and anything else going right would be a bonus. Which kind of made the fact that the evening DJ was terrible (really bad, don't use the Carl Simon Disco in King's Lynn unless you're idea of a dance floor filler is Jennifer Rush's "The Power of Love") not entirely the disaster it could have been.

The DJ eventually got the idea though (when various parties started writing long lists of requests on napkins to stop him playing any more awful inappropriate dross) and there were a lot of people dancing by the end.

And it was all, generally, a very good day indeed.

Pre Nuptials

There follows a full account of our wedding, which might seem to some of you a little self-indulgent (read: boring), but I feel the need to get stuff down in black and white as it's already starting to fade from the memory, and some people have been clamouring for a blow-by-blow summary, so here goes.

Events started for me on the Friday evening when I was ejected from my flat and sent to a hotel. Partly to stop me from seeing the bride before the wedding (it's nice to maintain some of these old customs) but mainly to give Jane and her chief bridesmaid room to do their bridal preparation thang. Which turned out to be a very good idea as the bridesmaid's partner ended up requiring shelter for the night too, and four of us in my little house with 2 large dresses and other related paraphernalia would have been a bit of a squeeze.

I feels strange booking into a hotel in your home town. Weeks ago, while we were putting together a sheet of information for guests, I realised that I didn't even really know what hotels there were in King's Lynn, let alone whether they were any good. The "main" town centre hotel in Lynn is "The Duke's Head", and that was the one we recommended to most people as it was near to the register office. It was also the place where I'd be staying the night.

The hotel's grand Georgian frontage on King's Lynn's market square masks a much uglier and shabby-looking 1960s extension at the rear, which is why I was a little worried that I'd stuck myself (and a few of my friends) in a complete dump. But it turned out to be okay, if a little quiet and under-staffed. I guess there aren't many business guests on a Friday night, and late October isn't exactly high season for King's Lynn tourism.

So there I was, sitting in a hotel room on my own in Lynn, and for the first time in what seemed like forever I had absolutely nothing to do. Anything that wasn't organised now would never get organised, so it was pointless worrying. The balls were all set in motion. I was naught but a Newtonian body, set in a collision course with my destiny...

Basically, yeah, I was bored.

Luckily help was at hand. I undid my suitcase and grasped a small black and square box emblazoned with a large shiny "X". The postman had surprisingly delivered it a whole day early that afternoon, and by happy chance I'd been home to sign for it. I unpacked the golden disk within and on my last night on Earth as a free man... set about installing OSX Leopard on my Mac laptop.

Certain people have pointed out that this is a bit sad.

In my defence, it was a great way to keep my mind off things without resorting to drink. And Leopard is great OS, it really is. I must blog about it sometime.

I left the install chugging away and went to explore the hotel a little and check that the reception (who for some reason had registered my booking under the name "Mr Harringdine", a surname so far removed from my actual one that I'm happy to repeat it here without fear of compromising my privacy) had managed to correctly understand a more important matter, namely that I would be checking out early the next day but not leaving the hotel, as we'd booked into the honeymoon suite for the next night.

On the way down I ran into...

Well, this is where it gets a little awkward. There were a smattering of my friends of the transsomething persuasion at my wedding, but they were (with one special exception) all in Stealth Mode. And even Sophie, who I'd never have wanted to come as anything but Sophie, was working her usual SEP field magic and going under most peoples' radars.

The bloke I ran into eating dinner with his wife is also a tranny, but it feels a bit wrong to use the feminine pronouns I'd use without thinking when reporting back about a tranny do, because this definitely wasn't one of those occasions. But equally it feels strange to talk about all of these people using their male names who you might know better as their tranny personas. So forgive me if I get a bit vague with names, they know who they are.

On the way down I ran into a tranny who's been a friend since my very first time out dressed and his partner. He told me he'd been called by Graham, who was having car trouble somewhere on the A1 and probably wouldn't be making it down the night before as expected.

Which worried me, but I pushed it to the back of my mind and worried about things that I could influence... namely ensuring that Mr and Mrs Harringdine could check in to the Honeymoon suite when they returned from the register office the next day.

Which is where I bumped into the Derby/Liverpool posse, looking remarkably fresh faced from their trip cross-country. It was really great to see them.

Which was a very good excuse to retire to a nearby pub and introduce them to the local hospitality. At some point Graham phoned again to say the car was a goner and he'd be staying the night in Worksop. Due to some terrible luck, his wedding guest expenses were turning out to be quite a lot more than anyone expected.

I didn't get at all drunk, I think maybe Bacchus had kindly decided to channel my alcohol content into Danny, who seemed to get inexplicably plastered on only a couple of pints of the local ale.

Which meant I was totally clear-headed for the next day. I got up and dressed, and then I got married.

Oh wait, there was more to it than that...

Back home

We arrived home at 1.00 AM this morning, and I've had a sleep and a day of doing very little except going "brr" and "tch... this time a week ago we were...".

Among the huge list of to-do items is a monster Flickr uploading session, a proper write-up of the wedding, a proper write-up of the honeymoon, and a monster blogroll backlog reading session. In short, a general re-interfacing with the online world - plugging in all the delicate little tubes and cables that were unceremoniously wrenched out when I disconnected myself from cyberspace a couple of weeks ago.

It might take some time, especially as at the moment I feel like doing nothing more than slouching on the couch and recuperating from all that doing nothing.

There is no renewal!!!

13 days in an artificial environment where our every whim has been catered for. It´s starting to feel a bit familiar.

I keep expecting a disembodied female voice to come over the tannoy...

"Lastday, Aquarius 35's. Year of the Hotel: 2007. Carousel begins."

Brownie points for anyone who gets the reference.

Anyhoo, the point of this post was to hopefully remotely fix the problems with the blog which some of you have noticed. Here´s hoping!

Gotta go, someone looking a lot like Peter Ustinov has turned up with lots of cats.

Playa y Cervecas

So what are YOU doing right now? ;-)

The Honeymooners

Apologies for the slightly dodgy apostrophes in this post, I can´t find the right key on this Spanish keyboard. Plus, I´m so chilled right now you could keep fish fresh on me.

I´ve never gone "all inclusive" before and the novelty of going up to a barman (or even better, serve-yourself taps!) and getting FREE beer hasn´t quite worn off. I have a feeling that I´ll get the hang of it just before the end of the honeymoon and then spend a week or so back home grazing off any food left unguarded and leaning over the counter at Wetherspoons to help myself to the lager.

"It´s OK!" I´ll splutter to the angry barman through a mouthfull of dry roasted. "I paid last month!"

The amounts of food and drink consumed by this place must be HUGE. There´s one wing that seems curiously empty. I´m beginning to think the hotel-like frontage it has is just a facade, and actually it´s just a silo built to house the gallons of San Miguel, acres of scrambled egg and yards of chorizo consumed daily by the inhabitants.

The last before last was a bit of a busman´s holiday... watching a drag show called "Diamonds are Forever" in the hotel´s theatre. They were actually very good. Actually based on that experience and a similar one in Barcelona I´m beginning to think that the Spanish "do drag" very well indeed.

Tomorrow we plan to hire a car and explore the island a bit more.

Or maybe just find a nice spot by the pool and discover more ways to drink alcohol.

I´ll decide later.