It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

Those of you who read my blog will no doubt have come across posts about our Cane Corso (Italian Mastiff) Blue, well I’m sad to say Blue’s been a little bit under the weather these past few weeks due to damage to her cruciate ligament in one of her hind legs.

She developed some lameness in her leg in May which was prescribed anti-inflammatories for and this seemed to do the trick, however at the end of June, beginning of July her symptoms came back, so after 2 visits to the vets and a set of x-rays we were told that she’d most likely torn her cruciate ligament and were referred to a Consultant Vet at North West Surgeons nr Frodsham.

So along came the appointed consultation where we were told that from what could be seen from the x-rays it appears that Blues ligament has indeed been torn, this was apparently obvious from the x-rays (not a vet myself, so have had to take his word for it), the next step we’ve been told is surgery and at present Blue is booked in to have the operation on the 13th August 2010.

We’ve been told the operation has a 96% success rate, but this all depends on how her recovery is managed, so for the first 6 weeks, Blue will be crated confined and only allowed out for her constitutionals and that’s it, then after the 6 weeks its a case of very slow, gentle exercise, which will gradually build up to a manageable 20 minute walk, and then over time hopefully build up to longer walks and fingers crossed semi-normality.

I can honestly say I am very nervous about Blue going under anethisia, as thats probably the most dangerous part of the whole operation, don’t know what we’d do if anything every happened to Blue, so fingers crossed, wood touched everything will go smoothly.

Will endeavour to keep you all updated on how our little Princess is getting on

you discover one of you ancestors was a former Ukrainian Vodka Distillary owner….

Well if your Dan Edelstyn, you get the next flight to the Ukraine to learn more about how his great-grandfather’s vodka distillery seized during the  Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, you hunt down the village that is home to this long lost distillery and along the way film the adventure.

But suppose that’s not enough, suppose you find that the distillery is still there but on the verge of closing, thus rendering a large chunk of the villages populace out of work, most people might just get on the next flight home with there curiosity about their family history satisfied, but then again those people aren’t Dan, who decides that maybe just maybe he can turn around the fortune of the village and the family’s former distillery, so how does he do this, he decides to start producing Vodka again, a vodka that resonates with  history Zorokovich 1917 Vodka . . . and so the adventure begins . .

First Dan has to find companies that are willing to believe like he does that there is a market out there for a new vodka, one of the earliest to take an interest is Babelgumwhich has helped finance the film he’s making about the distillery and is hosting it on there website, he also meets with one of the biggest Ad Agency’s Saatchi and Saatchi to discuss ways to market this new Vodka . .

Dan’s also set up a Vodka club, whereby members invest £50, which helps pay towards the filming costs, this little donation also gets you a credit on the eventual theatrical release of the film he’s making of his adventures, but not only that you also get  a pair of tickets to one of the premiers, and an actual bottle of  vodka from the distillery. . .  might have to see about investing myself come payday

But instead of me telling you how he’s progressing in his adventure why not follow him yourself on Babelgum, to start you off I’ve posted the first part of his adventure

If you enjoyed this episode of his adventure more can be found here http://www.babelgum.com/vodkaempire , a new one is posted every couple of day’s so keep checking back to see how Dan and his Vodka’s getting one, eventually the whole series of episode will be combined as a documentary that will be appearing on More4 later this year, so this is a chance to see the whole thing as its being made.

You can also follow Dan’s adventures via his blog My Vodka Empire & also his Twitter account danedelstyn.

I’ve managed to acquire some of the early samples of this family vodka and I can say its not a bad little number, though I’d recommend chilling it first as this seems to enhance the overall feeling you get from drinking it, which is a smooth sweet taste with a slight burn to the back of the throat, which you’d expect from a vodka, all in all its a very smooth drink and I’ll be watching out for it when it hits the shelves.

P1060619, originally uploaded by BagRat.

One of the real nice things about the cottage we are staying at in Ruswarp is the birdfeeder attached to the Sun Terrace outside our veranda doors, every morning we’ve been here we’ve sat outside to have breakfast and without fail every morning we’ve been joined for breakfast by various woodland birds, along with the odd squirrel or two.

Its so quiet and peaceful here, a really great place to recharge our batteries, Blue likes it to as theres a nice little woodland path nearby which we explore every morning with her.

While we’ve been here we’ve managed to visit Goathland, home of the 60′s themed Heartbeat TV show, Filey and Whitby itself, where we wondered up to the old Abbey above the town, you find photos of our journeys on my flickr page, the link to which is listed on this blog.

Today where heading to a place called the Birch Hall Inn, a little pub that a twitter friend @shiveringgoat recommended to us, looks a rather quaint place and is apparently very dog friendly, will report back later on how it held up to his recommendations.

Today i got the most hits on my blog its ever had in one day let alone 6 months, all thanks to Phil Jupitus re-tweeting a picture I sent him of my Cane Corso Blue wearing a pair of glasses, I’d tweeted the nice man Mr Jupitus mentioning how in the photo Blue reminded me of him in his glasses and the next thing I know he’s re-tweeted it to his followers.

I actually only realised this when I went on my blog this evening to make a post and while there checked my stats out for the day and wondered why there was were no stats showing for the previous day, investigated a bit more and realised that there were stats there but they were so low compared to to-days that they were hardly showing in the stats graph, it was just a long line with one hell of a spike for today, checked out a bit more to see what everyone had been looking at and realised it was the picture of Blue.

Its amazing what a tweet on twitter can lead to . . .  So Phil were ever you are right now cheers matey

Oh and here’s the picture which started it

Phil Jupitus's Doggy Lookalike

kennys party 071, originally uploaded by BagRat.

Kenny reached the grand old age of 50 last week along with Andy reaching the 40 mark, so they had a joint party to celebrate and used the oppurtunity to get everyone back togeather again.

It was good to see all the faces from the partys togeather again having a laugh and just generally getting on, party kicked off at of all places Stretford Cricket Club, then moved onto Lisa’s flat, where drinks flowed and people talked bollox (mainly due to what they’d had).

We left fairly early on in the morning 5:00am so maybe not so early, but the party carried on after we left, ending only when John, Ben and a few others decided to place most of Lisa food stuffs in the freezer . . . oh and after Ben had emptied a full bag of flour over the sleeping Lisa’s head (not nice Ben).

Gotta say Kenny was looking good for an old man and no doubt has many years left in him, all the best Kenny and Andy

that’s what I am, just not had the energy to post on the blog on a regular basis for quite a while now, think its been the winter blues that have been causing it, all these dark nights when I’ve been getting home from work’s to blame.

I shall attempt to remedy that by telling you about things that I’ve done int the week that’s been and gone . .

Sunday was spent walking Blue and then heading over to electrik bar in Chorlton for a most enjoyable night of Sundays 1 Deck Session where the DJ on the deck that night was the wonderfully moustached Andrew Weatherall . . . and boy what a moustache he has . .

Over the course of the evening he played everything from Rockabilly, the Clash, the specials and just about anything else that took his fancy, thoroughly nice man and thoroughly good entertainment was had by all who attended, these 1 Deck sessions at electrik just get better.

Should also point you towards @undeleted’s Blog were you can find a much better write up of the evening and who is the man responsible for this pioneering new camera interview technique “The Chest and Chin”

Monday through to Wednesday weren’t all that exciting just the usual drudgery of work and wondering if we’d be hit by another white out with the snow, the only highlights were watching the new series of Survivors starting on the BBC, which gave me and no doubt a few other dotted around Manchester the opportunity to play spot the Mancunian location, the most obvious was the exterior of the Midland Hotel, where they took Tom to operate on, didn’t recognise anywhere else, but that’s probably down to the fact the BBC have moved production of the new series to Birmingham, so expect to see local shots around there in the coming episodes.

Also spent some time uploading a few more videos onto YouTube . .  yes and they were of the dog Blue, but do you blame me, she is after all the prettiest dog in the world

First up in her new video adventures is the quilt sucking episode, it seems that when you leave Blue alone in the bedroom she has a habit of bunching up the quilt and grabbing it in her jaws and just  “Sucking”

She treats it like its some sort of security blanket or something, anyway here’s the proof and just check out the so serious face when she clocks the camera filming her

Next up there’s Blue enjoying the summer in Longford Park, filmed this earlier on last year, but just never got around to uploading it

Then came Thursday and today, not much to blog about I’m afraid.

As for tomorrow there might be more to blog about, as I’ve instituted #DogClub on Twitter and will hopefully have a few peeps joining me and Blue on our Saturday morning walk around Ivy Green, though this might change to another location as yet undecided.

Also I must say hello to Adrian or to his friends Eddy Layton, who I’ve recently discovered reads my blog from time to time, so Eddy if your reading this say hello to my mum next time you see her and say hello Mrs L and Paul for me.

As regular readers of this blog will know I am proudly owned by a Cane Corso called Blue and as part of this ownership deal, Blue insists that I take her out with me where ever I go and film her exploits and introduce her to anyone and everyone, when Blue first decided she wanted to be owned by me I spent alot of time on the internet discovering more about her family(breed) and during these forays on google I discovered a place where other people owned by Cane Corso’s met . .  a place called The Friends of the Cane Corso or FOCC for short.

Well Blue being Blue she just had to share her videos and escapades with all those other Cane Corso friends and over the past 2 years shes regualrly posted her videos and met other Cane Corso’s and the people they own and those nice people this year decided to honour her work as Ambassador for the breed and this is what they had to say :

It’s my extrememly happy duty to inform you all that the FOCC and BCCS have created an annual award for ‘services to the Cane Corso and being a positive ambassador for the breed’.

This award is given to an FOCC Corso, who the BCCS committee feels has consitently through the year worked hard to show the breed in a positive light. In this instance it is awarded to someone who not only keeps her own blog, but meets as many other owners as she can, comes to Corso events, keeps the community updated with pictures and videos that lift the spirits, and never stops learning. Her owners are a joy to talk to, and make sure she’s always spreading the Corso love! So without further ado, on behalf of the British Cane Corso Society and Friends of Cane Corso: Cane Corso of the year 2009 goes to….. BLUE! Owned by Sunscream. Congratulations and keep up the good work in 2009!

For those who’ve not met Blue before allow me to introduce her by way of one of her first video’s

If you enjoyed this video of Blue and want to see more of her you can find a link to my YouTube and flickr accounts listed on the right of this page.

To all those who know Blue can expect her to carry on promoting the Cane Corso breed in a positive loving way . . .

Well due to a schoolboy error last weekend whereby I set up a sub-domain with a fresh install of WordPress on it for testing purposes, I inadvertantly forgot to change the installs database record’s prefix’s I accidently overwrote my It’s a Blog ! Not a Log ! wordpress install, leaving me with a very empty blog as I’m sure you’ll all attest to.

Anyway Namesco have now done a restore of the database and the website to a state a couple of hours before the error and I can now return to blogging and hopefully in the future I won’t make the same mistake . . Doh !

So whats been happening in the week we’ve been away :

1. I’ve spent hours trying to get the site back up

2. I’ve been ill with flu and had 2 days off work.

3. A mate who stayed at the weekend has been diagnosed with Swine Flu

4. I’ve got a new battery for my Beamer (£79.99)

5. I’ve had some good news at work (will tell more in the future)

6. I’ve installed Windows 7 on my lovely Dell Laptop

7. I’ve been in the Trafford Metro ( a full blog post to follow at some point)

8. I’ve now watched Series 1,2 & 3 of Cold Cases and am presently up to Episode 2 of Series 4 and am quite hooked now.

Quite an eventful week so far . . .

for a couple of the Mashable Open Award

Theres  anumber of catagories I’d ideally like people to nominate me for:

1st up is Flickr Photo of the year

Click to vote

Then of course theres the Best Blogger to follow

Click  to vote

So come on people get voting for your one and only It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

Discovered a nifty little plugin for WordPress today called Twitter2Press it allows you to turn part of your WordPress blog into an image hosting service for all those pictures you tweet, you know the ones that normally got to twitpic or one of the other Twitter picture hosting services.

Its fairly easy to set up and you can be up and running with it on your blog in about 5 minutes flat, I’m using Tweetie 2 to post the tweets at the moment as this seems to be the only iphone twitter client that allows you to choose a custom image hosting service, though i could be wrong (feel free to correct me).

So what are the benefits of hosting your Twitter generated pictures on your WordPress blog, well for a start you don’t have to point links to them if you what to post them on your blog, there already here, not much of a benefit I suppose, it also in a sense allows you to mobile post to your blog using the medium of pictures, but the best benefit of hosting them is now people on Twitter are now being directed to your blog rather than some image hosting company, so your getting all that extra traffic, and all that extra traffic might just decide to read your blog and maybe even follow it, so it’s hopefully bringing new followers to your own little space on the interweb

Anyway time to eat the Tuna and Lemon grass stirfry I just tweeted about mmmmm yummy

Tweetie 2