My god, it looks so good I just wanna lick my walls all day.

Dear everyone on the second floor. If you see a gray cat marching past outside of your window, don't worry - it's just Henryett. He's 15 years old and knows what he's doing. It was only last week that I discovered that he can walk around the entire building this way and sometimes does.

I've bought a car! I bought a 1985 Lada Niva!

Now, if you like some other people I know, started laughing at my wheels, I just want to know, can you do this with your car? Hmmmm? Can you? (nutty Russian music optional).

No? Can't pick up scuba divers while driving in the water? What about jumping. Can your car do this?

My car might be funny looking but it's one hell of a ride.

After cleaning her room, she decided to invite her doll for a dance

and a quick kiss.

Phone-cameras are the best inventions evah!

Needed to put these up. Else they'd be in the way, what, with laying around on the floor like that. Aaargh, hate stuff that has no place!

So we began,

And we continued.

Also, Perle bought a carpet for her room with her current favorite animal, the flamingo, on it and would like to like to let the world know how pleased she is with it.

It's not been a good few months here when it comes to bacteria and viruses, clearly. Perle got the "winter illness" (which is what we call the stomach flu), and in between being sick she kept promising me that she would not be sick on the new clean clothes I gave her. Then as soon as she was ok from that she re-enters kindegarden and brings home the chicken pox. Clearly bored out of her skull she begs to visit anyone and everyone she knows while we quarantine her at home, not just to keep other kids safe but to keep her away from bugs until last night when finally she got to have some fun with me.

Bollywood dancing class! Oh yeah, she loved it. Danced and went nuts. Then she woke up in the middle of the night grabbing her side and saying she was in pain. This morning no breakfast, no pee. The was sick. And again. It wasn't until she turned into Linda Blair with heavy green puke that I called a nurse and asked what to do. Calmly I explained that she hadn't eaten or drunk anything so the green bile wouldn't be that strange, except there was quite a lot of it. Nurse said to go to the hospital.

At the hospital, while Perle tried to set records in fever, I stared at the giant flat screen TV chained to the wall for four hours wondering why there even was one up there when you couldn't get to any buttons on it, waiting for the doctor and their tests results. I also cursed the whole waiting for four hours part.

She's been attacked by another bug, of course, was the diagnosis so we brought little pukemonster home and she'll just have to hang out with mom here for another eternity (for her). This isn't good for either one of us, since I have to keep doing my freelance gigs and she resents that I have to work already, and then I get a guilt trip and in the end neither one of us feels any good.

It's at times like these I wish I had a "real job" and could play the "have to stay home with sick child" card. Then I'd actually be with her at home, instead of sitting next to her trying to still do my job while she gets sad and I feel guilty.

Of course, and as usual, the moment I step away from the computer my former only baby - Adland, has issues and I return home to read lots of - to me, considering where I had just been - really annoying mails about really silly things. I'd really like Adland to be a real company one of these days, so when I'm at the hospital worrying about my own flesh and bloods health, some other people at the office can deal with whatever happens.

Sorry about the whining, folks, but ain't that what blogs are for?

I've actually (gasp!) had a fun project recently - you know it's gonna be good when the title is: "You look tired, should I hold your breasts?". So I've been illustrating and layouting the book cover and done posters and various point of sale materials for the book. Today I got my very own copy, dented in one corner, but still. The thrill of seeing what I've only looked at on screen actually printed on a book is so nice! Batteries are out in my real camera so these out of focus phone-pics will have to do.

The front of the book - the outer cover is see-through, making the colors kind-of trash chick.

Remove the outer cover and you set our heroine free, complete with flying winged bra. Instead of breasts, there's the Authors name in round perky shapes.

The back cover shows off the colors again. God I love magenta right now.

Inside more winged bra, now as a pattern.

Some of the illustrations, but not all of them, on the inside of the book were made by me. The Buddah doing embroidery is one.

and the flame painted "rullator" that farts roses.

As well as the cannibalistic fry that eats himself.

And the black cat ready to get married.

Hitler mom.

As soon as I get all the materials properly shot I think I might finally add something new to my portfolio. About time, really.

xkcd.com

The Non-Expert explains why everyone is doing it wrong at The Morning News.

You might find the following argument, originally posed by my abusive uncle to his teenage stepson, a bit more useful—if not way more convincing:

I am a mortal being.

Wait, no, I am an immortal being.

Make me a grilled-cheese sandwich, asshole, or I’ll incinerate your Datsun.

See also this handy grammatical advice from dinosaurs.

Quantcast seems to have a very interesting businessmodel, they'll list all sites they care to find with mediocre stats, and if a site owner cares about the digits other people can see they'll have to use Quantcasts code to get the stats right. Though some like Shoemoney.com have compared their stats even after installing the code and found that Quantcast is off by a mile and a half.

I spotted Adland at quantcast, with stats beyond the pale not anywhere near the awstats stats and webalizer stats that I get from my own logs (the only things I'll ever trust and I use two just to be able to compare). So I asked them how I could get Adland removed from their pages, since I couldn't find this in the FAQ.

The answer is, you can't. Now that sucks. I asked politely and Chris Martelottis who seems to reply to every forum and blog posting about Quantcast (and possibly every email as well, poor dude) replied:

"Yes, I do not have a way to do this. I'm sorry."

I'd rather not mess with embedding third party images and other shit that screws up my SSL cert, which makes users of Adland freak out when they want to upgrade - and rightly so since the secure connection is no longer secure. So I can't use their embedded code to correct those bad numbers, and I can't get them to delete the entry. Nice. (Yes, I did try. Breaks my SSL cert. Fucked.)

Chris went on to say:

"As an audience measurement service we operate much like Nielsen for TV - if a program airs, we rate it."

HA HA HA yeah, but only idiots believe in Nielsen ratings, like Caff points out those numbers might as well be grabbed from thin air:

" They only measure 5,000 households. Out of how many in the US? Currently about 109 million and almost 115 million by 2010. You do the math. Yes, I know Nielsen claims that their measurement is representative of the entire population but I'm not sure how .004587% if the population is representative. If you were doing a scientific experient, you'd be laughed at if that was your sample. So why is it OK for measuring ratings?"

Why indeed. Chris goes on to mention Alexa and says:

"We are constantly working to improve the accuracy of our models, however there is only so far that panel based research can go given the immense fragmentation and specialization of websites (content and geography).

You can see this margin of error in the estimates we have for your site Vs your internal metrics. That's precisely why we launched the Quantified Publisher program (www.quantcast.com/quantified-publisher.jsp), so that the industry could move beyond outdated panel approaches for audience estimation.

As a collaborative and open ratings platform, we very much want your audience represented in the best possible light. Unlike other ratings services we allow publishers direct participation, entirely free of charge - however there is no obligation."

There is nothing outdated about churning your own server logs to find what quantity of traffic you have. Only your own logs show the real data, which you can grep any which way to learn how many and which bots visits, how many users come from where using what browser and so on. And as I said to Chris: "...with Alexa, it's pretty easy to ignore their silly numbers, as it requires toolbars installed. Most people know that they're flawed even if some dorks think their numbers have any value. They're probably related to the dorks who still believe that Nielsen ratings have any value.*

I still would like my site removed, and I am asking politely. So, is your answer "this is not done"?"

...and his answer was indeed, this is not done. I hate crap that I can not opt out from. Sure, it's not the same as Alexa, requiring a toolbar - but it is the same as any of those old free site stats out there requiring me to embed something on every page to count - talk about outdated. I don't have a need to do that for me, since I have my own server logs that I can check and I can keep these stats if I fancy showing people them. Not allowing me to opt out from their public guesstimation of my traffic really sucks. Chris might get a little peeved that there are no comments here where he might defend Quantcast, but if he really wants to get on the good foot with me I don't need to hear any more fluffy words about how Quancasts works, I just want to see my site OFF their listings.

* see Techcrunch "Alexa's make-believe internet