Create your own calendar wallpaper!

A new year is here and with a new year comes traditions such as making new year resolutions (in England), eating twelve grapes (in Spain), or throwing water on everybody (in Thailand). Of course, wherever you are, a new year is also the perfect occasion to create your own calendar wallpaper for your computer!

There's a great website called Calendar Labs which lets you create your own calendar wallpapers, and they do most of the work for you. You simply upload your photo, then select a few options, such as the month, where you want the calendar positioned, and wallpaper size, then click 'create wallpaper' and it resizes your photo and adds a monthly calendar.

If you're feeling lazy, I suppose you could use the same photo for every month, and quickly churn out twelve almost identical calendar wallpapers for every month of the year. Or if you prefer variety, and if you're not lazy, it only takes a few minutes to upload a different photo for each month.

Here's a set of monthly calendars that I made using some of the covers from my books and short stories...

January:

January's calendar is based on the cover to my scifi short story, The Darkness And The Light, which is set on a planet where each day lasts for the equivalent of one hundred and twenty four Earth years. As you can imagine, this leads to fluctuating valuations within the property market.

The Darkness And The Light

Quiz of the year (2020)

When people do a 'quiz of a year', they usually include questions on significant news and events from the year in question. However, because I'm such a self-obsessed person, er, I mean ... because this year has been a disappointing year for some people, I'm instead going to feature a quiz of the year about the Charles Fudgemuffin blog!

All of the following subjects were featured in blog posts found on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog throughout 2020.

Water: Home to this camera shy duck,
but how much does it weigh?

To help make things easier for new readers, each question is multiple choice, so if you don't know the answer you can guess!

1) January: Google

In January the Charles Fudgemuffin blog focused on the weird and wonderful world of Google.

Can you remember how much a pound of water weighs according to Google?

A) A pound
B) 8.36 pounds
C) Five gallons
D) 2.36 miles

A Merry Christmas message for nerds!

At Christmas time it's traditional to wish others a Merry Christmas, and that's a tradition which I like to respect here on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog.

This year to mix things up a little, the Christmas message from Charles Fudgemuffin is specifically aimed at nerds. So without further ado, here's this year's Christmas message...

Controversial Christmas questions

Here on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog I've regularly featured Christmas themed blog posts every Christmas, and I've also occasionally featured blog posts on controversial questions. However, this week I combine the two, as I take a look at controversial Christmas questions.

Merry Christmas from Charles Fudgemuffin!

Where do you stand on the following controversial Christmas questions?

1) When should you put your Christmas decorations up?

I'm a big fan of Christmas decoarations. Last Christmas on the way to work I used to walk past a street where every house was done out in spectacular Christmas decorations, and it looked impressive and always put me in a good mood (at least until I got to work!).

However, when is the optimum time to put your decorations up?

Quirks of the English language (part 2)

English is one of the most popular and commonly used languages in the world, but it's also a language with many quirks. Here are a few more of them...

Unfortunately, I didn't have a photo of my foreign neighbour Keith
receiving eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated
weightlifters, so this photo of one genuine sleigh will have to do.

1) I before E.

Except when your foreign neighbour Keith receives eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters.

Weird.



2) Why does 'fridge' have a D in it but 'refrigerator' doesn't?

Surely it's a stupid idea to insert extra letters into an abbreviation!

Modern Japanese words (part 2)

As I've mentioned before on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, many modern Japanese words sound very similar to their English equivalents. That's because Japanese 'loan' words (words which are imported from English) are translated using Japanese sounds to produce the nearest sounding equivalent to the original English word.

Mmm, ke-ki!

Here are some more cool modern Japanese words, and once again to someone who's never spoken any Japanese it may sound like I'm making these up, but I promise you these are actually real.

To start off with, here are a few random examples...

1) ke-ki = cake
2) miruku = milk
3) chokore-to = chocolate
4) resutoran = restaurant
5) su-pa-ma-ketto = supermarket
6) uirusu = virus
7) mo-ningu ko-ru = wake up call (morning call)
8) pe-pa- tesuto = written exam (paper test)
9) kurisumasu = Christmas
10) rabu reta- = Love letter

Cakes gone wrong (part 2)

I've featured 'cakes gone wrong' before on the Charles Fudgemuffin, and as next week sees the celebration of National Cake Day, it seems like the perfect opportunity to feature another batch of cakes gone wrong, in a blog post which I've cleverly entitled ... 'Cakes gone wrong (part 2)'.

1) A great year in purple

This first cake features a cake where the baker decided to follow the instructions literally...

Baker: "Would you like me to write a message on the top of the cake?"
Customer: "Yes, write, 'Thanks for a great year' in purple."
Baker: "Okay, right. Got it. Write, 'Thanks for a great year in purple'. No problem!"

"It's been a great year in purple!"

What was going through the cake-maker's head when they wrote the message on the cake? In what context would 'a great year in purple' ever make sense? It's got me baffled.

Did they imagine a conversation like the following...