I’ve been playing again. Playing with widgets that is. I know what you must be thinking, but I am perfectly sane and normal, really please believe me.

The widgets I’m referring to are those you can find on WordPress.com. So many widgets, so little time. Just which ones do you pick to make very best use of the opportunities that arise.  I can’t make my mind up between displaying pages or not, having a category cloud or a category widget (I’ve gone for the later incidentally).  The problem is that each widget you use makes your page longer and longer, that’s not a problem on the home page as I display my most recent 10 posts, but when a reader visits a page like this, then there’s an awful lot of white space at the bottom of the page.

So, my solution was to change the theme (that’s the second time in less than a month) to see if I could find a nice three column layout that I liked the look of.  It’s still difficult, the one I’ve settled for, I’d really like to be able to change the background colour to a luverley shade of pale puce (not!) but I can’t unless I purchase the upgrade – so now I have a new question, do I risk irritating Anne who thought the previous theme was dark (and gloomy) and keep the background grey, or do I hope that my pretty rainbow of eggs provides enough colour for one blog to bear.  You see, too many choices.

So back to the widgets.  I’d like people to be able to find my other websites – I have several you know, I’d love them to be able to read (if they were at all interested) the other things I write about on those self same websites.  I also want more people to subscribe to my blog and event to comment on my blog – the numbers are growing every time I write something that is of interest.  Ah! so there in lies the heart of the problem, writing something of interest.

I guess one of the things I need to overcome on this blog is that it’s so random, I talk about just about anything that takes my fancy – hence the question of widgets – and then some.  It’s not a business blog, it’s not designed to be a business blog, this is just Lindy’s space on the web to explore, play and have fun with the things that interest me.  I hope you’ll agree it’s eclectic (Laura, if you even read this, then there’s a potential word of the week for you!), I hope you think it might be interesting, but above all I hope it sparks your enthusiasm and interest in all things blog.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes, widgets.

People come in many shapes and sizes and in one of two genders (normally), but until now they’ve never been ‘designer’ – that is they may well wear designer clothes, carry designer handbags (my one vice I have to admit!) or even be a ‘designer’ (for the web, graphics, fashion etc…. ), but designer baby…….. where has that come from.

I can only imagine how a parent must feel when faced with the knowledge that they may pass on an inherited disease to their children, and I can also well imagine why it would be an easy decision to make (when you have the choice) to choose only those potential babies who are free from a particular disorder by a technique called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).  But, where does it end?

This is not a diatribe against those who choose to have this treatment, simply an observation that maybe illness, death and disease might be a human ‘natural predator’ – let’s face it, unlike other animals, we have none (except ourselves).  In other words these are some of the very things that help to keep a balance in the world.  Isn’t it interesting that as soon as one disease is ‘eradicated’ another arises to take it’s place!

If the scientists at CERN have anything to do with anything, shortly we may not need to worry about whether there is a recession or that house prices are dropping here in the UK.

They started colliding beams in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time today, the worlds largest particle accelerator designed to test out various theories of particle physics – in other words, just what exactly is going on at the sub atomic level ….!

According to some sources, there are fears that this could create mini (or even maxi) blackholes into which we could all be sucked, quickly, but not necessarily painlessly – although we don’t know that do we, never having experienced it before?

We may yet have a few weeks to party, party, party though as the first high energy collisions won’t be taking place until the 21st October – oddly coinciding with the Autumn equinox, I wonder if that was deliberate and that maybe they are trying to tell us something …!

Why is a chair called a chair and why is a table called a table?  These are questions that regularly tax my mind into answering and I still have never been given an adequate answer to the question.

Yes, I know it is all about language and the development of syntax and other long words I often don’t understand, but why these particular sounds and why not others.  Who was it who decided that this thing we sit on at a desk or a dining table should be called a chair – who felt they had the authority to do that or was it simply something that evolved?

Other things that fascinate me about words is the way they sound, when you really listen to the words that someone is saying it can be quite astonishing that this particular sound has this particular meaning.  Just think of ‘balderdash’ say it slowly to yourself and roll it around the tongue – doesn’t it sound odd and why does it mean something you don’t agree with.  Any thoughts on these and other interesting words gratefully received.

Bye for now – I’m off the Beer in North Devon for the rest of the day and playing hookey from The Hysterectomy Association – very naughty but the weather is lovely for a change and we need to make the most of it.

Linda