An Update

Ok, so two blogworthy events have happened in the last few days. First, I went to Parc Disneyland Paris on Friday with Nadia. Second, I went to a café/restaurant called Delaville Café with various people last night.

1. Disneyland Paris: I have been interested in visiting the Eurodisney Park for a while, and finally got around to going there on Friday. It was bloody cold, about 4 degrees, and a weekday, which helped keep the numbers down. This was a bonus for us because we survived the cold, and we were able to avoid long queues on the rides - I think 15 or maybe 20mins was the longest we had to wait for anything. The scariest ride was Space Mountain, which is a rollercoaster that shoots you up at the start, kind of like a launch, and then travels through twists and steep descents inside, in the dark, so you can't really tell what's about to happen. I think my favourite ride was the Star Wars simulator. We travelled on a shuttle to the Forest Moon of Endor, and had a few problems along the way. We didn't get to go to the second park, the Disney Studios, because we left it until the end, thinking we'd finish the main park and if we had time, pop over to the other one. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time because the second park had closed by the time we got there. It was a little annoying, but there was really only one ride that I wanted to go on there - the tower of terror hotel thing, but from the ground, it didn't look taller than the Giant Drop at Dreamworld anyway, and I've been on that a couple of times already.

The second event: Dinner last night. The restaurant, Delaville Café, was great. The food was delicious (I had magret de canard and belle ile flottante). The decor ws impressive, and from the era called Classical Revival (if you're an architect). There are several sections to the building, with a restaurant, bar, lounge, and terrace, and the waiters are friendly (we tipped them with Starburst). I'd definitely recommend this place, and I'd like to return sometime.

Who's been reading my blog?

Ages and ages ago, not long after I set up this blog, I added a site statistics manager to the coding, in this case, sitemeter (see the number at the bottom-left of the blog). It is a nifty device which allows me to see who has been reading my blog lately, and/or where they are. It also shows me how they found my blog, whether by a direct address, or through a google (or other) search, or if it was a link from another blog (and it tells me which blog too). Readers fall into one of two categories; regular readers or one-night stands. Most of the google searches are one-off readings.

Recently I noticed a new regular reader*. Someone who lives in Brussels, uses a Mac with Safari 1.3 and has English set as the system language and who accesses the internet through the ISP Coditel. Anyway, because this reader seems to have become a regular, I wondered who it could be (after all, I don't know many people in Brussels!). I looked back through my reader list and found the first entry for this chap. His first viewing of my page showed that he found my blog through a link from a former-former blog of Aggie's (I think she's on her third blog since that one). Luckily, Aggie had also set up a sitemeter account on her old blog, so I was able to look through her statistics to see who's been reading her porridge lately. It seems this guy in Brussels found her site thanks to a google search for the following words: "sean drake uq". The "uq" was presumably added because I'm not on the first page if you just do a search for my name. Since that first visit, this reader has come to my page from the links on several of my friends' blogs, specifically Kat, Nat and Nick. Now, as I said before, I don't know many people in Brussels, and the number is severely reduced when I refine the terms to "people I know in Brussels who know that I went to UQ, and who also know Kat, Nat and Nick". In fact, I can only think of one person who fits that description. I told Kat about my new reader, without mentioning who I thought it was, and she immediately came back with the same name, so while it's still circumstantial, I'm fairly certain I know who it is. The situation amuses me greatly. Definitely in a "laughing at" rather than a "laughing with" kind of way.


* All of the reader information is publically available - just click on the sitemeter number on the bottom left of the page to see who reads my blog, or what your entry looks like. I have had (mostly one-off) readers in many interesting places and countries.

Red stuff leaked out of my head

My head had an encounter with a metal towel rail in a friend's bathroom last night. The towel rail came off without a scratch, but my head hurt like hell and then decided to start oozing red stuff. Not too much, so I didn't require a transfusion, but it hurt, and it still hurts this morning. :-(

In other news, this flickr group is amusing.

Quelle ville!

Ha!
I've just been reading my sitemeter statistics, and recently someone read my blog from a town called Hicksville:

Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : New York
City : Hicksville
Lat/Long : 40.767, -73.5254 (Map)
Distance : 5,796 kilometers

How unfortunate for the town, and townspeople (unless, of course, they are all hicks).

J'ai fait du shopping

I went shopping today with Sarah because I decided that I needed to buy a new jumper. This is not an easy task in Paris as most items of clothing fall into one of two categories; outrageously expensive, or fugly*. The first jumper that I saw that was both nice and not overly expensive didn't actually exist. This is a problem because one of the main reasons one wears a jumper is because it's a bit chilly. Jumpers that don't exist don't provide much warmth. After this existential disappointment, I went to a different store where I saw two jumpers that I liked on a table under a sign that offered a discount if you bought two of them. So, I inspected the jumpers, and discovered that they both, in fact, existed, and bought them. Sarah wanted to look for a pair of shoes in a store that wasn't actually there, so we gave up on that idea and went for coffee instead.

Lunch was at a nice Japanese restaurant in an area near the border of the first and the second (though I think it was technically in the first), with Sarah and Ben, before the shopping quest.


*fucking ugly

6789

I have recently had visitor number 6789 to my blog (well, since I installed the sitemeter). Visitor 6789 uses Win XP, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (you should change to Mozilla), and a connection through TPG, which seems to be based in Queanbeyan, NSW. It was Nov 8 2008 10:25:16 am in the visitor's timezone.

Now, I can't tell for sure who this person is, but I can possibly guess. I don't know anyone in Queanbeyan, though most Australians know that it's close to Canberra, and I know one person with the misfortune of living in that centre of boredom. So, that suggests it's Lizard.
On the other hand, Australian internet service providers occasionally use IP's that are listed as being in very strange places, possibly just for fun. I know I had a few visitors whose IP's were in Alice Springs, even though they and their computers were in Brisbane, so I can't guarantee at this point that it is definitely Lizard.

Are there any claimers for this wonderful title?
Person Number 6789!

Bienvenu à l'hôtel de californie

Надя sent me a link to the following song, saying that it's one of the strangest version of it she'd ever seen. I think it's strange too, yet cool, but also kind of creepy. What do you think? (Oh, I think it's really good translation too, for the record).



(This is also the first time I've bothered embedding a video in this blog)

Спасибо

Спасибо товарищу Ленину за наше счастливое детство.

This sentence doesn't really apply to me, because I didn't grow up in the CCCP (USSR), but it amuses me because of what it means and because of the children's song associated with it.

November's here.

Well, it's Sunday night, and almost time for bed for me. I've just realised that I've let an entire weekend pass without getting around to blogging. I can't really use the "not enough time" excuse this weekend, so I'll play the "just didn't think of blogging until it was late on Sunday night" card. Maybe I'm just getting forgetful in my old age.

It's now November (or novembre or listopad) and being the northern hemisphere, this means winter's fast approaching, which the current cold temperatures can attest to. I don't mind cold weather, but I'd like it a whole lot more if it didn't come packaged with rain and/or wind, which make it rather uncomfortable, especially the double 'and' option. Being hit in the face with bloody cold rain isn't fun. And it doesn't snow. If it's going to be cold, and get down to zero (or lower) temperatures, it could at least have the decency to snow.

Ok, there's my Sunday night rant. I could attempt to make it a weekly thing, but we all know I'm not a reliable enough blogger to make promises like that.