Since Mari is moving from nightmare DreamHost to HoldFire I obviously had to backup my WordPress installation, backup all the files on the server that I needed and keep it safe for a few days until the switch was done. At some point during this very long and boring process, I did most of it manually, I decided that since I had about $50 in my PayPal account I would look for a good host / register and finally buy my own domain again.

It took me quite a while to track one down that was a great price and had positive reviews. I ended up going with VoNetwork.net’s S-200 plan for a mere $20.00 per year for 200MB of space with 4GB of bandwidth. I really, really don’t need any more space than that but if I do then I’ll just upgrade in the future. I came across VoNetwork.net via Jenn’s post about them on Lavish.

Anyway, within 20 minutes my site was live and I was searching for a decent theme to put up while I created my own. Something happened to my installation (uh, it went..nasty!) and by the time I’d fixed it the lovely people over at WordPress.org had released version 2.5 so I wiped my site and started over with a new install of this fabulous new version of WordPress.

So, ladies and gents, welcome to my new home - AshesFromStars.com

I’ve always been lured towards playing in online casinos, probably because I don’t fancy getting all dressed up to win some money. As I’ve mentioned before, I like gambling on horses from time-to-time and I’m a mean poker player, so I guess that online casinos were the obvious next step.

There’s always one problem however - what online casino website to pick from? There are literally thousands online - there are over 66 million results when you search Google! So how on earth are you supposed to know which ones are good, who takes what as payment and which ones are out to scam you? The answer is the Online Casino Bluebook which reviews online casino’s for you to help you choose the right one to sign up with.

The site is really simple and easy to use, showing results ranked by bonus size, payout percentage, customer service, game features, # of games, software graphics, and ease of use. If you’re just starting out with playing online I highly recommend checking out this site first to help clear the fog a little when deciding. It’s makes one decision a little less of a gamble!

Your musical taste is superior as fuck, and I’ll leave it at that.

Rhiannon, I love you. That was better than getting my site reviewed, hahah!

Like the post title says, I’ve left my course work to the last minute. I’ve left buying a printer and scanner/photocopier to the last minute. I’ve left looking over my bosses’ notes from last years couse to the last minute. Argh.

I’ve had five weeks to complete this module. In those five weeks I’ve had 10 full days off, plus plenty of days where I’ve been working back shift so could work on it during the day. I’ve done nothing but type and look up the National Lottery and Camelot websites but it’s still not done. So now I have until 10am on Wednesday morning to complete it, since that’s when my workgroup starts at the office. I’ve only writen about 50 pages, with an addition 20 as evidence. That’s only 70 pages which seems like nothing compared to the example folder which we were shown. I hope I haven’t screwed up, I want this so, so badly.

Plus my mum ordered an all in one printer for me from an online store who offered next business day delivery. It should have been delivered today but the money’s not even come out of her account yet. I doubt very much that I’ll get it tomorrow which means I’ll have to go to PC World on the bus, buy a massive all-in-one printer and come home on the bus with it. Not looking forward to that. Especially since the company that she’s bought me one from seem to be complete scam artists. She checked them out before she put through her order but only on Kelkoo and Pricerunner. It seems that the company themselves has written the reviews on these sites making them out to be excellent. It’s only when I went on a scout around to find their phone number that I came across other websites full of complaints and horror stories about them.

I’ve already complained to Kelkoo about them promoting a bogus company (which they are..they trade under three different names with three different phone numbers but are all registered to the one building, whose post code is wrong on all their websites) who rip off customers. I tried called each number I found, only to be cut off after 30-45 minutes without even talking to somebody. They’ve not replied to an email sent over 15 hours ago and now I’m pissed off.

May I scream now?

It has always been my dream to buy a cheap car (obviously after either CJ or I have passed our tests!) and drive down to England, stopping off at Manchester, Liverpool and London before jumping onto the ferry to drive city-to-city across Europe for a few months. Don’t ask me why, I think I’ve watched too many road-trip type movies. Of all the cities I want to visit the most, I think London tops the list. As a British citizen, I’ve only been to our capital city twice in my entire life - that’s shocking!

There are a few places that I’m dying to visit now that I’m off age, and the famous London restaurant Gordon Ramsay At Claridges. Can you imagine, shopping til your feet are killing you (although, in my case it would be window shopping) and then stopping in to have something to eat, made by Gordon Ramsey? Ok, I know he doesn’t do the cooking but still! He’s a lovely, lovely man.

According to my favourite new website, TrustedPlaces.com nobody else in London wants to visit Gordon at Claridges! Surely I’m not the only person? Although one other person loves Claridge’s Bar going by their review! That’s what I love about trustedplaces, you get real reviews of real clubs, pubs, restaurants, sports venues..everything really, by real people! I don’t plan a night out without checking the website first.

When I first started visiting blogs of friends who had signed up to payperpost, a service that allows it’s users (generally referred to as Posties) get paid to blog I was extremely dubious of the whole situation. Money for posting a few links and reviews on your blog? There had to be a catch.

It wasn’t until I was reading Jenn’s blog and realised just how much money she had earned from PPP that I starting doing my research. Surely it wasn’t just as easy as posting an entry on your blog to meet the advertisers requirements? As it turns out it is that easy to earn money!

Unfortuantly for me, at the time, my blog wasn’t old enough to meet PayPerPost’s requirements. So I patiently waited until my blog was old enough, 90 days, in order to register my blog. I considered signing up as an affiliate until my blog was old enough to register but it seemed like I was last to jump onto the bandwagon and everybody had already signed up!

Since I’ve become a member of PPP I’ve made a cool $42 from four posts and it couldn’t have been easier if PayPerPost tried.This money is a godsend at the moment as I’m desperate for a new digital camera which I’ll buy from eBay and since my earnings are paid into my PayPal account I’ll never actually ’see’ the money, it’ll just be put to good use buying things from the internet! My next big purchase will be from eBay also, a laptop. Granted I’ll need to post more than 4 posts to buy that
outright but anything towards it will be excellent since I can’t really afford one at the moment!

If you’re looking for a way to make some extra cash online then I’d recommend PayPerPost - there’s no catch and it’s easy enough to write posts to the advertiser’s requirements. If you’re having doubts - don’t! Sign up now and start reaping the benefits.

So it turns out that this year the boyfriend & I aren’t going to Blackpool. We aren’t going to Benidorm, we’re going to Los Cristianos in Tenerife sometime in October. The only downside to this is that he’s also invited our friends. *shrug* I suppose it would be fun with them but obviously I want to go away together alone. We’ve only done it the once and that was to Dublin about 3 or 4 years ago.

I’ve had a look on various websites for pictures and reviews of Los Cristianos, and my gosh it’s a beautiful place! There’s a water park and places to go out on boats to see dolphins and whales nearby and I think it sounds wonderful, even if I’m afraid of boats!

Hopefully, we’ll be staying in self-catering apartments rather than a hotel. They’re a lot more fun I think, and at least you know what you’re eating - the last time I was in Spain I thought I was eating onion rings when in fact it was squid rings. Yuech! The apartments I fancy are something like the Reveron Apartments, it’s £238.00 for both the boy & I for a week in a studio apartment which is not bad, really!

If anyone has been to Los Cristianos, or Tenerife in general, recently…what did you think? I’ve not been since I was about 4 and he’s not been for at least 5 years! But Tenerife means something to him, so that’s where we’re going!

In other stuff that I’ve been up to..wow what a busy weekend I’ve had! On Friday night the boy & I went to our friends to play poker. I ended up making dinner, a gorgeous chicken and vegetable stirfry with lots of soy sauce and peppers. It was amazing! And I didn’t poison anyone. I think I might post the recipe for it, because it really was out of this world nice. I can’t believe I actually cooked something without killing anyone. After dinner the boys got drunk and we played Xbox and had a sort of mini-pub quiz. It was great fun, but as it turns out my night was about to get so, so much better! The boy & I left the guys to play poker and went into one of the spare bedrooms for a little fun ourselves…won’t go into too many details but it was a great night. We also talked and talked and talked like we haven’t done in ages and decided (half-heartidly on his part I guess since he had been drinking) to start saving money for holidays, a car..whatever.

2 hours later we actually went and played poker. I was the dealer and my god those guys totally loose the knowledge of how to play poker when they’re drunk! Heaven help us if we ever go to a real casino, they’ll be thrown out for acting the idiot!

On Saturday we went shopping and played some pool, which I actually won a game of, very impressed with myself on that one. I was getting fed up of the boy constantly winning so I started playing properly (like putting some power into hitting the cue) and won! I wish we’d put money on the game now. The rest of the night was spent watching nearly all the episodes of Still Game that have been put out on DVD and eating kids sweets that we picked up in PoundLand - you know, strawberry laces and dolly beads and sherbet. Teeth-rotting stuff.

Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix
If I’m honest, I was just a little disappointed with this movie. It seemed to me that the entire story was rushed, with not enough emphasis on characters and relationships with the director, David Yates, was trying to cram the entire book into the shortest time possible. Granted the movie lasts for 138 minutes and it is, I suppose, a children’s movie but I wouldn’t have minded an extra twenty minutes in an uncomfortable Odeon chair just to have the story told properly.

The entire story is choppy and I feel that those who haven’t read the book would get lost very easily. The character Tonks isn’t even introduced to the viewer at all, I’m sure that the only mention of her name is when she tells Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody not to call her Nymphadora. It’s such a shame, as I thought that Natalia Tena fitted the image of Tonks in my head perfectly.

I loved the Dementors at the start of the movie, again these fitted just perfectly with the image I had of them in my head. In fact , a lot of the effects used throughout the movie fitted with the perfect descriptions JKR writes in the books. My favourite scene I think was the scene where Harry and co arrives at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place and the people living in the houses next door don’t realise that their houses are being squished up so that number twelve can ‘appear’.

The kiss between Cho and Harry was rather fanfic-y. I don’t know, I think I expected it to be a bit more..over quicker? Or something…But hey, each to their own.

Overall I think that too much of the book was missed out, with too much time focused on un-important things, like the kiss. The effects were amazing, the camera work was a tad too Hollyoaks-like (funny angles, ‘quirky’ shots) and the character relationships weren’t given enough time to fuse together to make the viewers believe them. I think that I’d probably rate this movie with 3 stars out of 5…unless you’re a major, major fan don’t bother going to see it and wait and rent it when it hits the DVD shelves.
The review of the book is coming soon, I’m still trying to gather my thoughts on it.