Look Out! It's An ICBM!

Don't Panic, The Apocalypse Isn't Here (Yet)

No, we do not have any Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles today, although I should apologise for panicking you.  I can also shoot down another panic-mongering press story, viz:

"Huge asteroid capable of wiping out entire country is on near-collision course with Earth"

O RLY?

     I noticed that no astronomy sites were reporting this, only the press, in full-on shrieking mode.  Alarm bells rang, so Conrad poked a little further.

     "Huge" is rather relative.  The rock in question, 2014-YB35, is apparently 1 km across, which is pretty big, but asteroids like Ceres are hundreds of kilometres across.

     Then there's the "near-miss" - actually a distance of 2.5 million kilometres, or in other words, ten times further away than the Moon.

     So, "Moderately large asteroid to miss Earth by millions of kilometres" is more accurate, but probably sells fewer papers.

Oh Yes The ICBM

Allow me to explain.  Here at BOOJUM! we use certain conventions to refer to the outside world, and you may not be familiar with the root or terms used, so:

"I.C.B.M." - "Ice Cream Breakfast Man" - Conrad, in other words.

"Turkey Neck" = Codeword for Madonna.

"South Canada" - America.

"Chip Shop Wrapper" - The Metro

"Wirst Bus/Last Bus" - First Bus

"WoE" = "What on Earth" - no "WTF" here, we are safe for work, if not sane for work.

"The Modern Babylon" = Manchester

"Hay Pesto" = Hey Presto; this one's just to see if you're paying attention.

Mint chocolate Vienetta breakfast!

Hay Pesto

I made up a recipe from the Co-op's Easter pamphlet, and - hang on and let me check a "Best Buy" date - ah, April 2015, we're okay - 

Although this does say use within 14 days of opening -

      - and that jar's been in the fridge for months.  Consequently I had to eat the lot myself, and there was indeed a lot, enough to feed two people or one greedy one:

     Conrad of course ate but half and had the rest for lunch today.  Moderation in all things.

The Business Of Blogging
Conrad has no idea why some posts get dozens and dozens of hits, and others fare more humbly.  Putting a fish in the title seems to help, and reporting on parties always goes down well.
     Apparently there are 164 million blogs out there, which implies that there's a fair bit of competition for attracting visitors.  Another stat is that a lot of blogs fail after 3 months.  Conrad seems to be doing something right, as we are coming up to 2 years for BOOJUM! and the traffic amounts to about 700 hits per month - over 12,000 in total.
     Here's a link to the first blog post ever:

http://comsatangel2002.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/first-post-on-this-newly-created-blog.html

 - It won't take you long to read it, it's only text and a couple of paragraphs long.  Pretty obviously the blog has come a long way since then, and last night I was looking at sites that advised on how to increase your traffic.
     The problem was, they all assumed that their readers were businesses or companies looking to heighten their profile and increase customers.  There didn't seem to be any advising on "Posting nonsensical drivel and how to get more people to read it", which is  probably a gap in the market that someone could fill.

Conrad: advising on blogs or wrestling with a cake, your go-to man for either

     I have also added Google Analytics, which has so far come up with nil results, so I'm probably doing something wrong - old dog new tricks, eh?  When - or if - I can get it to work, I'll doubtless bore you with statistics about it.  It's a free application, or at least for those blogs getting less than 10,000,000 hits per month; I think BOOJUM! will just scrape by, thanks Google.

Edna Undone
If you were paying attention earlier this week - YOU WERE PAYING ATTENTION WEREN'T YOU? - then you know our Four-Legged Alarm System underwent the snip yesterday, returning from the vet's very dozy and dopey.  She began today by barking at the postie, so she - BECAUSE I CAN TRACK DOWN YOUR ISP AND FIND OUT YOU KNOW! - yes, so she had obviously perked up from her behaviour Wednesday.
     She's adapated to the onesie rather better, viz:

She insisted on playing with the Annoying Squeaky Dog Toy

     Since she's going to be prevented from getting at her stitches for 10 days, she gets to change onesies, too:

Frilly ends and pretty pink pictures all over it.

For her walk she gets to  - I MEAN IT! - she gets to wear the Cone of Shame again, which is a bit of a problem as she has to get used to it's dimensions before she can successfully avoid banging into things.

Plastic People Of The Universe
Yes, that Czech prog rock band.  Listening to them last night on Grooveshark, I still haven't the foggiest idea what they're singing about.  Cake?  Politics?  Carving a piece of wood?
     Alas for my laziness.  Is there a site out there that lists their lyrics?
     Apparently not.  You can find out that they were treated as borderline-terrorists by the Czech state, as apparently rock and roll music kills Communism*.

Quill And Pot
I boasted on Facebook about only ever using a quill pen and inkpot, which is one of Conrad's usual exaggerations, yet there is a nugget of truth in there, viz:

Okay, so it's an ink bottle, not a pot.  Hair splitters!

     It's a rather slow process, writing with one of these, as the ink runs dry every few seconds and you have to dip in the ink bottle again, taking care not to blot.  You can just see the line about "A queue of curlews in curlicue", which I thought was amusing.


* One reason it will never get played in North Korea.  Tee hee!
   

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