There was a huge breakthrough in the cat eating monkey case today. A team of highly trained cat detectives acting on a tip off managed to apprehend the rouge monkey. Initially he denied all charges but after some “mild” persuasion by DI Willow and her team, the monkey finally admitted to the charges of attacking four innocent cats. Cats can once again sleep easy in their baskets now this monkey is safely behind bars. See the dramatic pictures from the crime scene below.

The suspect is captured for questioning.

Detectives Willow and Lucy begin the questioning process.

Getting nowhere they play "good cop bad cop"

Willow is the bad cop. After this "gentle" questioning the monkey confesses to four murders and is sent to jail. Crime does not pay.

Further to Rory’s article about naval defence cuts I came across this article on The Daily Referendum that Portsmouth Naval Base is under threat of closure. To help keep it open you can sign this petition.

Its April Fools Day again and looking around a few websites I found the following cool products. I Want One of Those is offering a Robo Girlfriend which has several advantages including a silent mode. Whilst Think Geek has a host of great new products including the WiiHelm for hands free game playing, Piranhaz battle fish and the inhalable caffeine stick. All great products if only they were real.

Tired of not being able to hit those shots on Wii Bowling? You need this cool Wii Playing Robot. Made of Lego and including two motors it is able to bowl a perfect game every time.

I found this funny story on a website about home exchanges. Basically on one home exchange an American couple were asked to feed the cat in their UK holiday home. However not knowing what the cat looked like, it wasn’t until the end of holiday that they realised they had been feeding a stray cat and ignoring the English couple’s beloved pet. It just goes to show how sneaky cats can be.

It’s easy to assume when shopping with a well known company that your credit card details are kept safe. However the theft of 46 million credit card details from TK Maxx shows that even large companies may not keep your details secure. Personally when shopping online I prefer to use my Paypal account, if I am using a website for the first time, so that I don’t actually have to expose my card details. Like many people though I don’t think twice about using my credit card when shopping on the high street. It makes me wonder whether I should go back to withdrawing cash and avoid paying with my card altogether, or perhaps I am just getting paranoid about the whole thing?

Poor Willow didn’t stand a chance against the power of the monkey.

We have now successfully fitted two of ours cats with a small tracking device which attaches to their collars. Whilst it is not actually meant specifically for cats it enables you to quickly track down a cat that does not want to be found. For more information on this see Rory’s blog.

Oscar being attacked by the cat killing monkey.

There is nothing more frustrating than to have a perfect layout only for items to be accidentally moved and thus appear misaligned when it goes to print. A simple shortcut can help prevent this. To lock the items on a page simply select them and press F6. A black padlock icon will appear when you hover over the items to indicate that they are locked and no amount of dragging will move them. The only way to unlock them is to press F6 again to reverse the process or choose unlock from the item menu.

I read a humorous post on Owens blog today about the importance of choosing the right name for your website. He highlights a few examples where companies have got it wrong with hilarious consequences. I think my favourite was www.penisland.net which may sound like a porn site but is in fact a site called Pen Island offering custom made pens.

One of my cats Oscar was not very well yesterday. Unfortunately he had some sickness and diarrhoea and although he quickly recovered he was unable to clean himself properly ending up with poo all over his rear end, so we had to give him a bath. Bathing Oscar is not an easy task as he hates being picked up and is a very large strong cat. With this is mind we devised a plan that we thought would keep us safe from flying claws. First Rory prepared a washing up bowl of warm water with a generous amount of Herbal Essences 2 in 1 Shampoo added to it. I then fetched a very thick towel and we both put on gloves for added protection. After chasing Oscar around the living room for about half an hour I was finally able to throw the towel over him covering his head and front paws. I quickly picked Oscar up and keeping his head covered to avoid being bitten dunked the whole back end of the cat into the washing up bowl. Then holding him tightly Rory proceeded to rub the shampoo into his coat before rinsing him off with warm water. At this point Oscar was growling very loudly. Next I moved the towel from his head to wrap the back claws whilst Rory sponged soapy water onto the front part of the cat. One more rinse and Oscar was clean although very wet and not very happy. A day later and I am amazed at how soft and fluffy his coat is. Now that we have perfected the technique perhaps we will bath him more often…. Or maybe not.

Ollie seems unaware that there is a cat eating monkey behind him waiting to strike.

The find and replace option in Quark (Apple key and F) can help save a lot of time. I use it primarily for removing double spacing from documents or for making changes to font size and style.

To remove double spacing make sure the text option is ticked and also tick the document option at the bottom of the box. In the first text box type two spaces by pressing the space bar twice. In the second text box type one space. Then click “find next” to locate the first double space. To change all the double spaces in the document at once just click the “change all” button.

You can also use the find and replace option to change styles within the document. Instead of ticking the text option instead tick the style option. Select the style you want to change in the first box and in the second box select the new style that you want to apply. Then click the “find next” button or the “change all” button as before.

Other options available with find and replace are searching by font, font size, colour and type style. These are also very useful: for example you may wish to change the fonts in the document from Ariel to Times New Roman or change all the fonts that are 16pt to 12pt. It is also possible to change font attributes such as making something bold or italic or underlining it by using the type style option. These options allow you to do this just once rather than manually going through the whole document.

Have you ever wanted to ski down an escalator? No me neither but this guy did at Angel tube station.

To make a new colour in Quark, choose colours from the edit menu or the shift key and F12. Then select new from the options. Give your colour a name and select the type of colour from the “model” drop down list, this will usually be CMYK when typesetting a job for print. Uncheck the spot colour option and then select your colour either by clicking on the colour wheel, using the colour sliders or entering the percentages of colour in the CYMK boxes. Then click OK and your new colour will appear in the colours palette. If you need to make a colour from another document for example a PDF you can always open it in Photoshop and use the colours from the CMYK hex values to get a good match in Quark.

Lucy meets the cat eating monkey.

We all know that here in the UK it is very difficult to find a river or ditch that does not include a supermarket trolley. Well now it’s possible to see just how many abandoned trolleys there actually are out there. I found this bizarre website called trolley spotting. Basically it’s devoted to tracking abandoned trolleys in various locations. It includes maps to show the trolleys location and how far it is from its originating supermarket. 

We went to a housewarming party this weekend at Brads, Richards and Neil’s new house. Despite the fact that it was cold and raining someone had the great idea of having a Braai (BBQ). With the help of a few strategically placed umbrellas the meat stayed dry which is more than I can say for most of the guests.