We’ve had a tool for some time now for making movies with your own images and text.  Many of you have made good use of it, but noted the following drawbacks:

• It is quite slow.
• The artwork is very basic.

We are now experimenting with a simpler tool for making animations from your images.  It deals with the first problem, since it is much much faster (I don’t quite understand why, ask our Bozo).  The speed will also let us use fancier artwork (though we haven’t got that in place yet) without the website grinding to a halt.

Watch this space!

There’s a lot of dodgy information on romance on the web (not the least of which is on our own site), but there’s a truly excellent description on how to be romantic on rinkworks.com.  I particularly appreciate the following rule of thumb:

There is a basic rule of thumb to follow: if it’s cool, it’s not romantic. For example, high powered rifles are not romantic. Science fiction is not romantic.

If only I’d learned that earlier in life.  The author has many observations of this nature, which combine to predict the most romantic object possible:

 It is, simply, a small red candle made out of chocolate and shaped like a teddy bear holding a heart with scribbles all over it that plays a tune when you wind it up.

This corresponds with my own experience that things-shaped-like-other-things are intrinsically cute.

My one beef is that the author asserts that having food on one’s head is not romantic.  I think it depends on the food.  Who could say no to a crown of cream with a cheeky cherry on top?

Make sweet love, make sweet music, what else can you make that’s sweet?  Mostly food, according to google:

• You can make sweet potato pie.  Yummy.
• You can make sweet gherkin pickles.  To each their own.
• You can make sweet sushi, candy that looks like sushi.  Mmm, things that look like other things…  Wasabi should always be chocolate flavored!
• You can make sweet dumpling, otherwise known as YuanXiao, otherwise known as The Palace Maid of Emperor Wu Di of the Han Dynasty.  If a foodstuff doesn’t have an exotic pedigree it is not worth eating…

Say it with lolcats! See the love category on icanhascheezburger for romantic lolcats. Valentine’s day gold. Our favorites:

• we haz an us
• i like big mutts / and i can not lie
• i luvz u / but dis can nevr be

Thinking of getting your honey something nice? Good idea! You’ll want to avoid getting them any of the following:

1. A box of milk chocolate if they like dark, or vice versa. If you don’t know what kind of chocolate your sweetie likes, then you had better start paying attention. Chocolate is serious.
2. Any kind of diet book. I shouldn’t have to say this.
3. A bonsai potato kit. Don’t ask.
4. A book you want to read. Even if they want to read it too, they will question your motives. As do I.
5. A book you don’t want to read. Why would you get anyone a book not even you like?
6. Even worse: a subscription to a magazine you’ve never seen them read. You want them to get a weekly reminder in the mail of how poorly you understand them?
7. A domain name. Domain names don’t count as gifts, apparently. They are not real enough. Not even if they come with a nice card and a ribbon. Sigh.
8. Road flares, reflective vests or a good pair of shoe insoles. Seriously.

We came across some confirmation of this list on Amazon’s bad gift ideas for Valentine’s day.  Number one recommendation: a diet book.  Then a smattering of other books and magazines with titles like “why you’re so dumb and broke”, “taxidermy today”, and so on.  There are a few items we hadn’t thought of telling you to avoid, such as:

• Stainless Steel ANSI Flat Washer #1/4 Narrow .281″ ID x .500″ OD x .063″ Thick (Pack of 100)
• Human Heart Model (4x actual size)

… but hopefully you could figure that much out yourselves.