Links Ahoy! (17) - The Long Overdue Version

I haven't done a Links Ahoy! for so long. My bookmarks have been pining away in their folder, hoping for a chance to peep at the big, wonderful world. So here they are at last - freshly baked bookmarks from my oven of love (I'm so sorry.)

Woo Hoo, New Domain

I finally bought my own custom domain. I've been thinking of doing it for months, but I was tweaking my blog layout, and I didn't want to make the switch until I was completely finished.

My old domain was flippy-doodle.blogspot.com and the new one is flippydoodle.com. There is an automatic redirect from the old one to the new one, and I've changed the feed address, so everything should be running smoothly. This shouldn't affect your email subscriptions to this blog, and you should continue receiving feed updates in your reader, as usual (without making any changes).

If you are having any problems accessing this blog, or something is not working properly, please let me know via Twitter, or email. I will greatly appreciate it and fix it ASAP.

Chanel Spring-Summer 2013 Haute Couture Show

I'm not one to fancy high fashion much, but when I saw that the Chanel Spring-Summer 2013 Haute Couture show was taking place in such a beautiful venue, I couldn't resist watching the entire collection.

That is the Grand Palais in Paris. It is where Chanel do their show every year, but this year the atmosphere looks extra enticing. Maybe because I'm such a nature freak nowadays, but I love the creation of an indoor woodland to add to the beauty of the Grand Palais. It looks as if a mythical forest erupted from the beautiful ruins of human beings. If I were present in the audience, I would feel as though fairies were going to materialize in front of my eyes.

When the zombie apocalypse hits, I'll be the first to get bitten

Not because I would be inadequate at survival, but because I want to get bitten and become a zombie. Let me explain.

See, most of zombie fiction usually concerns a group of survivors. The crux of the tension is how these survivors have to navigate the day-to-day hardships of living in a post-apocalyptic world. Not only do they have to deal with fighting off the hordes of brain-munching undead, but also the dickish human-beings (the apocalypse seems to bring out the worst in most people).

Ah Well!

Please do not make me vacuum over cat piss again

Every one hates cleaning their house (except my Dad, who somehow takes an unnatural amount of joy out of  sweeping and mopping). So imagine an existence consisting of nothing but cleaning. Such is the doleful existence of the Roomba. If there is any robot that you should be worried about becoming self-aware and rising up against the humans, it should be the Roomba, because:
(a) there are millions of them across households
(b) us humans give them nothing to do but slave away on carpets all day.

Anyways, a Roomba became self-aware, and writes all it's depressing rants on it's very own Twitter account. It's a bit like Marvin the depressed robot from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but with more drudgery. Here are a few well-chosen snippets from bitter existence of the Roomba so far:

(Becomes Self-Aware)
— Self Aware ROOMBA (@SelfAwareROOMBA) June 28, 2012

A drop of water that seemed as large as a lake

If I could have my time again, I think I would be a microbial ecologist. I would spend my time studying microorganisms in natural environment. I'd cut my way through forests of bacteria on a grain of sand. I would imagine myself in a submarine, in a drop of water that seemed as large as a lake. And for one more turn around I would be an explorer naturalist in a new world
E.O. Wilson, in Lord of the Ants (NOVA documentary, 2009)