I have been spending far too much time on the internet recently, especially on shopping websites. It’s bad enough that I window shop in shopping centres (where I usually end up purchasing something) but to start doing it on the internet is going too far!!

I’ve found many great websites selling my favourite brands of beauty products and makeup cheaper than in high street shops, like BeautySleuth, where you can get ghd hair straightners for a lot less than on the high street! The limited edtion set of GHDs for 2007 - the hot pink ones - are £127.95 on BeautySleuth. That’s nearly £10 cheaper than on the high street. Plus there’s the added bonus that £10 from each sale of these straightners goes to the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity.

BeautySleuth’s deal of the week this week is a ghd IV styler + Thermal protector + mat + the DVD for only £92.95. That’s a saving off over £40! It’s a great deal, and I’ve already bought mine!

The other thing that I love about BeautySleuth’s website is that they offer tips and tricks for the products that they sell. For the GHD straighters you can find out how to create shiny, sleek straight hair or cute spiral curls using your new product. It’s really helpful!

I only know one person who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. This person died recently and it broke my heart - they were the most helpful, kind and caring person I’ve known.

• This person looked after me when I finished school between the ages of 5 and 8.
• They picked me up and took me to their house until my mum finished work and could pick me up herself.
• They were full of great stories of life and people.
• They spent there whole life working in hospitals, as a porter and later as a bus driver for the children’s charity the Variety Club.

This person was my great-uncle. Because of him, I’m going Pink for October and I urge anyone who’s been effected by breast cancer to do so.

This is strange, I’m in the boyfriend’s house and I’m the only one here. His mum and sister are away to London and he’s at work. I stayed last night since I’m off work today and decided to stay all day until he gets home.

I’ve been busy mind you. Washed our bedsheets, washed half his clothes that were lying about the floor. Thrown out 2 bin bags of sheer rubbish from his room (why he has 10 empty 2litre bottles under his desk I’ll never know) and washed, dried and put away all the dishes that were in his room. Seriously, we are pigs sometimes. Last night we drank Tia Maria (me) and Vat 69 (him), ate mint choc chip icecream and re-watched series 4 of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. I woke up a few hours ago to empty glasses, a tub of ice cream that had turned into water and an overturned ashtray and the TV blaring ‘Who Are You’ by the Who since we obviously forgot to switch it off. Hah, ohwell. The room’s tidy now.

Work’s been crazy, my manageress (also a good friend) has moved to an other shop and I’m gutted. The new manager is nice, I know him already, but doesn’t start for 3 weeks. Which means the shop comes down to the other supervisor and I. Great things to look forward to… stock takes, store visits, lack of staff. Joy.

I have great plans for this site. Just watch.

I’m just about to upgrade to WordPress 2.3, even although I never upgrade on release days. I trust WordPress this time. Although I’m prepared for non working plugins.

Just remember if you’re doing the same today backup your database. Just in case!

[edit] Done! With the use the the automatic-upgrade plugin I upgraded in a few minutes. Looking good so far, the only error I can see is the footer on my dashboard theme has shifted 100px right and 30px up the way. No biggie! Oh, and my category plugin has stopped working. I didn’t like that anyway.

I for one know how annoying it is when you decide you want to (re-)open a website and don’t want to splash out for a domain and hosting straight away. Over the years I’ve had numerous different domain names and paid hosting, as well as having lots of sites on freehosts. I admit it, when I was younger I was running upto 20 websites at a time. Personal site, blog, review sites, layout sites, fanlistings, hosting sites…hey, I was a fat kid with no friends when I was 13 - I had time to spare.

Anyway, roll on 8 years and the world of free hosting is slightly better these days than it was back then. I remember being pretty much restricted to Geocities and Homestead! This post will be updated as and when I come across good, free webhosts.

1. 110mb.com View test site

   
   This is what you get when you signup for 110mb.com;

   • 2 GB (2000 MB) web space
   • 6 MB max file size upload limit
   • PHP v5.1.4
   • Shockwave & Flash
   • XML support
   • 110DBManager (better then phpMyAdmin)
   • Run IonCube encoded PHP scripts
   • Push-Button Application Installer
   • 100 GB (100,000 MB) monthly transfer
   • FTP Access (CHMOD Allowed)
   • GD Lib 2.0.28 support
   • Powerful WYSIWYG website page builder
   • Online File Manager (Unzip compressed files from the server!)
   • CURL enabled
   • see more

   
   

   I have fond memories of 110mb.com, this website actually started out there for a few days before I accepted for hosting here at misstuned.com. Their website quotes the following;

   110MB is powered by Quad Intel Xeon Servers operating in a cluster-based environment. In plain english: lots of servers connected together rather then 1 server which hosts all the members as is true for 99% of free hosts, since they can’t afford extra servers. Meaning that if one 110MB server goes down temporarily, your site will be entirely unaffected — ensuring maximum data protection and uptime for your site.

   It’s certainly true - I have a few sites currently on 110mb.com and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen any of them down at all!

   The reason that I love 110mb.com is the excellent CPanel which it boasts. From it you can set up MySQL databases (there is now a $10 fee to do this now, shame really. You could always use freemysql.net ) access phpMyAdmin and one-click install over 30 great scripts and CMS, including my trusty WordPress. There’s also phpBB3, CuteNews, bBlog, ZenCart and Coppermine in there too. For those not wanting to pay the small fee that is now charged for MySQL there is a WordPress installation which doesn’t use it, called FlatPress which is a one-click installation. I’ve tried it out and it’s just like WordPress only a lot more simplified - perfect for first-time bloggers!
   An other great feature of 110mb.com is the FTP access and the easy to use File Manager with built in un-zipper. You can upload a .zip file and then press the unzip button to..well unzip the file into a folder!

If you’d like to nominate or suggest a free host for my to try out, leave me a comment below.

I’m on the lookout for a new phone and I came across this offer from mobiles.co.uk, who are offering a free Nintendo Wii with the purchase of some of their contract phones. I’ve been with mobiles.co.uk before, so there’s nothing dodgy about them.

The free Wii comes with the following phones (source of information about free Wiis).

Blackberry Pearl
Samsung F300
Sony Ericsson K8001

It’s tempting to get the Blackberry…

I’m still around, I just have a lot of course work to keep on top of and killer hours at work.

Give me a week, I’ll be back to blogging more often. Promise.

Everybody loves a good gossip, wither it’s about the next door neighbours nightly visits from a strange young man (ie.. my happy-married-mother-of-5-neighbour!!!) or the latest scandal about Britney’s custody battle. It’s human nature, really. Hell I know that I’ve spread gossip on my blogs before…mostly about celebrities and their scandalous lives mind you, not about my neighbours. Don’t think that’d go down to well if they ever found my website. When I come to think about it, every single magazine that I read is full of celebrity gossip.

That’s why I can’t wait to see the new TV show from the creator of The OC, Gossip Girl on The CW. It premieres tonight in the USA so I’ll probably need to wait for ever to see it over here in Scotland. Still it looks awesome, it’s based on the books by the same name and is about extra privileged teenagers who live in Manhatten’s Upper East Side. They find out that the local party girl is back in town via the blog of an unknown, going by the name of ‘Gossip Girl’. She relays all the town’s gossip via her blog, where every body logs onto to find out who’s fallen out with who and who’s asking who out!!

Sounds like an awesome idea for a blog, it’d be cool to find one based on my town…as long as I was never mentioned!

Somebody please help me, I’ve hit a brick wall over the stupidest thing;

can somebody name this font for me? I desperately need to know so that I can edit this menu and send it back to the printers but it doesn’t seem to be installed on my computer so I’m going to buy it.

Help?