Too Young To Be Grumpy

Last week my wife came into work with me and went off into Southampton to spend her Virgin Megastore vouchers (there's no Virgin Megastores nearer than that!) that she'd been given for her birthday in January, I think it was. When she came back and I asked what she'd got I was a bit concerned that her selection of a box-set of 3 "world cinema" films might not be entirely my cup of tea. We watched one of these - Whale Rider (imdb.com) - on this wondefully lazy holiday afternoon.

It's been over 20 months since I last used my Dolby Digital amplifier, and it's one of the reasons I've not watched so many films in the last year. It irks me that the sound quality is poor when I listen only through the TV. So I bothered today to slack a few wires across to the speakers. I'd been waiting until we decorated the room to lay them in properly, but decided to just put them up for now.

This certainly increased my enjoyment of the film. However, the film itself was very impressive. I really enjoyed it. It was by no-means your usual Hollywood no-brainer affair. It was romantic, beautiful and heart-warming. The film revolves around the coming together of Maori values and traditions and the pressure of modern life. The lead character, Paikea, was played perfectly by the incredibly talented Keisha Castle-Hughes, backed up by a great perfomance by Rawiri Paratene as Koro the old traditional grand-father.

I think what I liked most about this film was it's lack of pace and subtle direction. It took me away to a wonderfully photographic part of the world and into another culture, although somehow grounded with modern living. I always wanted to visit New Zealand, and this film has just strengthened that wish. The DVD is good too, with lots of interesting extras, and in a box set of 3 for £14.99, it's even better value.

At last - it's seems to have taken ages to come, and now it's here it'll rush by in an instant (sounds like sex?) - but I'm at last on holiday!

The talk I did went ok, mainly because no-one much turned up - it is Friday afternoon after all - so it was pretty relaxed. I could sit down, and didn't have to preach. It was rather off-putting that they were preparing our department's barbeque and storing the ready-made food in hot-trolley things in the same room. The smell was gorgeous. Perhaps I'd have gone if I'd remembered about it, particularly as we're not salsa-ing tonight, but there you go.

Ahhhhh.. bliss :o)

Oh well.. only one hour to go to my presentation. After my presentation I think I'll slack off and then I'll be on holiday! Yay!
I hate presentations... the butterflies in my tummy are going.. oh well... think positive and all that...

Some more of my sunflowers have come out. One of them couldn't have been more pokey if it tried.

Tomorrow I've got to do a talk to some summer interns that have been working in my department. They're only there for about 6 weeks, some of which has already passed, so I'm giving a talk to give them an insight into how the small things they've been working on relate to the wider context of what we do. In fact, my talk's not quite as vague as that, as I've just got to talk about the project I worked on for 2 years - what it did, how it was designed and stuff. Still, it doesn't mean I'm looking forward to it. In fact, giving talks is one of the many things I hate about my job. I'm not good at it, and I don't like doing it. One good thing is that at least tomorrow is the last day before my 2 week holiday!

Had great fun at the salsa party on Tuesday evening. Turned up on time at 7:30 with all our goodies. As we got there a load of people we didn't recognise were dancing some strange dance. As it turned out it was our teacher's daughter and her dance group preparing a dance to show us all. We laid out our wares with much oohing and ahhing from the people who had turned up. The party quickly got started with our teacher making us salsa dancers do a demonstration to all the non-salsa people who seemed to have turned up. Unfortunately only half of our class has yet arrived, so it was rather embarrassing to be up there strutting our stuff on a nearly empty dancefloor. Various other dances were taught and danced, including a cha-cha-cha, a line dance, and even bollywood. I even got to go up the front with teacher and show off my indian head wobble that I studiously perfected when I was watching Jerry Springer immitating the "Speak to the hand girl coz the face ain't listening".

As promised here are a couple of pictures of people enjoying my biscuits and Dayzee's cakes (ooh err missus).


Much food and Wine - Actually everyone's ignoring our biscuits (just behind the cups) in this picture!


Pete - despite his face, he did enjoy them and now wants to move in with me.


Linda - one of our teachers taking her first bite of paradise.

After "da party" we headed down the pub for a quick pint before flopping into bed rather knackered!

Oh, just trying out a new plugin for the Firefox Greasemonkey plugin that lets me add Technorati tags.

Well, last night my wife and I spent alot of the evening cooking. It was perhaps a little extreme but for tonight's salsa party, to signify the start of our teacher's 2 month holiday, I made some biscuits - as requested by Garry and Biscuits (of course) - and Dayzee made some fairy cakes topped with a creamy butter-icing.

The recipes for the biscuits I made are already online, so with a nod to Tim Berners-Lee I figured I should just link to them. Firstly I made Chocolate Chip Ginger Biscuits, from Delia Smith's Website. Everything Delia puts down as a recipe will work for Mr.Layman in Mr.Layman's kitchen, and these biscuits are yum-diddly. I've made them before, so I haven't yet tried any of the ones I made last night, despite the temptation to do so. I also made Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies which are much softer biscuits, and much richer. These are absolutely gorgeous and I've made these 5 times now, and can never get enough of them. Dayzee made Fairy Cakes, although unlike this recipe she coated them in a luxurious butter icing from Cakes & Cake Decorating by Angela Nilsen, Sarah Maxwell and Janice Murfitt (I should get commission on sales of this book!). Her visionary plan was to slice the tops off the cakes and place them upright in the icing, so they look like butterfly wings. However, they didn't rise quite enough and a brave attempt ended in us sharing the mangled masterpiece. The other cakes were content with their white, round toupé.


From left to right: Chocolate Chip Ginger Biscuits, Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies, Butter-Icing Fairy Cakes

We'll take them all to our party, tonight, and maybe there'll be some photos of people scoffing their faces tomorrow.

It's easily lunch time now, and I've only just noticed I've been wearing my jumper inside-out.

Doesn't time fly when it's the weekend? Why don't the weekdays fly by in a whoosh of general relaxation too? I really do regret the way that the 5 days from Monday to Friday seems to take an eternity to pass me by, and Saturday and Sunday barely register during a blink.

I spent this weekend busily rewriting the code for the webpage that will be my business. I had written a generic front to it once before but came to my senses last week and realised it looked a bit shit. So, this weekend I went all out and made it look alot nicer. In particular I spent much effort ensuring that the HTML code was "semantic" - that is, the code is simple HTML and contains no more than is necessary to describe the information I'm trying to purvey, and all the "pretty-pretty" is done in the CSS stylesheets. The reason for this is that visually impaired people use thingies known as screen-readers (like JAWS) that will speak the webpage to them. Navigating a badly written page using a screen-reader is probably like trying to navigate the remnants of programs recorded on a VHS tape. I'm making sure my webpage is a DVD.

This was initially spurred on by the fact that I've eventually gone and smiled sweetly at various "professionals" at the post-office and bank branches, who have peered at my passport and certified that I am who I say I am. This should allow me to get my business bank account, which means I can get on to the next stage of getting an Internet Merchant Account. It also has the advantage that I can now go to Makro and get our household stuff at decent prices; particularly the gallon drums of ketchup I get through in no time. Actually, they're about 1/3rd of a gallon, but it wouldn't have sounded so good.

It's been a pretty crappy day at work so far, mainly because I'm rather too tired to actually think, and being as that's what I'm paid to do, being a researcher and all, it's been pretty unproductive. As I have a dwindling motivation for doing my work, I think I might muster up some interest in doing more to my webpage. The wonder of ADSL means I can work at home from work, as well as working at work from home.

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself tonight now the Tour De France has finished. I guess I need to make some cakes or biscuits for tomorrow night's salsa party.

Damn, I'm unfit. Unfit for exercise, that is, rather than unfit for purpose, whatever my purpose might be.

I made my mate a birthday card this morning and decided to bike it round to his place, about 1.5 miles away. It's relatively flat, except for the sharp ascent right near their house. So I managed to power my way along to this hill but cracked about half way up it. It's not a long hill, either. I crawled my way up it in a pretty low gear, dropped off the card and headed back. It was great coming back down the hill, but hitting the flat again, I realised I had expended most of the energy I left with and I trundled along the main road at not much more than 10mph. Strangely I found the long hill heading towards my road easy. Still, I still felt particularly cumbersome and pathetic as I constantly compared myself to the great Lance Armstrong, who's about to win the Tour de France. Now I'm sitting at home attempting to recover, dizzy and with flickering vision. I think I overdid it.

Our pumpkins have come into flower, and I thought you might wanna see. They're pretty big now, and are covering a large area of ground. I'm really quite excited by it. I put my hand in the shot for a bit of scale.



I just been outside doing a patch of emergency gardening; I was outside and noticed that there was lots of holes in our brussell sprouts. They had looked good last night. When I looked I saw a snail nestling in the centre of one. I threw it out, but as I was getting it I noticed a strange patch on one of the leaves. It was a perfectly laid out grid of eggs! Not far from it was a caterpillar. I squashed tha caterpillar and rubbed the eggs off. When I turned over other leaves there were other patches. And on the broccoli! I rubbed them all off (at least, all the ones I could see) and squashed another 5 caterpillars. Must be the time of year for butterflies and moths to lay. Gotta keep an eye on that otherwise they'll eat the whole patch!!

For anyone out there who doesn't use Firefox yet - you should. Go get it now. The reason? Well, apart from all the various security arguements that are circulating, Firefox has a most wonderful extension that adds a button to your toolbar. This button does one thing - it takes you to a random place on the internet. Well, almost random. A random place that other people have considered interesting.

And there's some funny places out there. Try these for a chuckle.

• The Official God FAQ
  
• Small Ads from the UK
  
• Calvin & Hobbes Snowmen
  
• The Bubblewrap Simulator
  
• Human Rhythm
  

However, this is just a bit strange, if pretty clever.

And, when you're done...

I've been meaning to do something for a long time, that I eventually got around to today. I read, with some horror, on some forum somewhere that the Vivitar 283 flashgun can fry the latest digital cameras if it is used with it. This scared the hell outta me thinking that I might've put the flash onto my camera not knowing such knowledge. Some of the older 283s can supply over 600volts at the flash contacts which the latest, delicate digital cameras just can't cope with. I know I only bought mine about 8 years ago so wasn't sure if it was going to fry my camera or not. The only way was to check it.

Using the information here I measured the trigger voltage on my flash. Thankfully it topped at about 12 volts which is apparantly very safe for the latest cameras (which I've heard can accept about 250v). With some trepidation still, I tried it out and thankfully it works a treat. That's one less thing to worry about. I guess I just need a shoe to pc sync adapter now, so that I can avoid red-eye when using it.

Sometimes dangerous thoughts start rushing through my mind; dangerous thoughts like the one I'm having now. In fact, I've had this one a few times before and it's less the idea of it, which is a common well-trodden path, but more the anger and rebellion is begins to build within me. My simple thought is this: Why do we spend so much of our lives working? Simple, but it builds in me a rebellion that almost tips me over to the "Fuck it! So I won't" field where that grass is always greener.

Some people like working, sure, and good luck to them. But why do so many of us shaft our lives apart with hours upon hours of the dullest and most tedious things we could possibly think of doing? Of course, money plays a role in this, and where would we be without it? Probably fitter and less crowded by motor vehicles - that's where. But, let's assume money's here to stay, then why don't we all just do a job we enjoy? Is it because there would be no refuse collectors, or sewage plant managers, or cashiers at my local supermarket?

I always end up going through this brain dump only to realise people seem to have to do shitty jobs. However, I am determined that one day I will be in, at least, a less-shitty job working for myself (where I can make it as shitty as I like). Time to dig into that suitcase of courage and press on the pedals to make it to the next summit on the climb up Mount Paradise.

Yesterday was a big baking day for me. I made 2 cakes in the afternoon. As my Dad had been so kind on Friday night, I decided we should bake him a nice cake - however, he's wheat intolerent, so it was with glee that I noticed Esurientes had posted a nice chocolate orange cake that didn't use flour. More about this after the marble cake recipe.

The flourless cake requires the boiling of 2 oranges for about 2 hours, so while that was happening I went ahead and made the peanut butter marble cake. Again, it's from Cakes & Cake Decorating by Angela Nilsen, Sarah Maxwell and Janice Murfitt. If that first picture whets your appetite for baking, then here's the method.

Ingredients

115g chocolate, chopped
225g butter or margarine
225g peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
200g granulated sugar
200g light brown sugar
5 eggs
275g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
¹/₂ tsp salt
120ml milk
50g chocolate chips


For the glaze:

25g butter or margarine
25g smooth peanut butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence
175g plain chocolate
1 tbsp water


Preheat the Oven to 180^oC and grease a ring mould. It's lucky I'd bought a big ring mould as this recipe makes alot of cake mix.




Melt the chocolate in a "double boiler" - that is in a bowl suspended above a saucepan of simmering water.

Place the butter (or marg.), peanut butter and sugars in the bowl of a food mixer, or in a large enough bowl to use a hand whisk, and beat until light and creamy (about 3 to 5 minutes). One at a time, add the eggs and beat each in well.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the butter (or margarine) into the mixture alternately with the milk until just blended (don't over mix, as it will remove all the air from the mixture).

Split the cake mix into two and into one blend in the melted chocolate, and in another stir in the chocoalte chips.

Spoon the cake mixes into the cake tin one spoon at a time, running a knife through the mixture to create a marble effect. Don't let the knife scrape the sides or bottom of the cake tin, also don't over mix otherwise you'll lose the marble effect.




Bake the cake for 50 to 60 minutes until the top springs back when pressed lightly.




Cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.




Once cool, make the glaze. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and melt over a low heat, continuously stirring until well blended and smooth. Take off the heat and continue stirring. When slightly thickened pour over the cake allowing the glaze to run down the sides.






Here you can see the final marble effect in the cake. It was a very nice cake, and you can really taste the peanut butter, but not overpowering. The cake mix makes a huge amount which completely filled our rather large ring mould. However, I think we'll be definitely making this one again.


Once my marbled cake was finished I went ahead and make the flourless cake. It's very easy to make - basically just bung the cooled boiled-oranges into a food processor with some other ingredients and cook it. We had to go up my folks for tea, so I was hoping we could get it finished so Dad could have some. However, we didn't have time to make the topping, so we made that up my parent's house. I made one mistake though - and that's that I didn't leave the ganache (the topping) to cool quite enough before pouring it forth over the cake. It went everywhere. But it was still a lovely cake tasting very much like Terry's chocolate orange. I honestly don't think my Dad has had such a nice cake since he went wheat-free. The recipe is on Esurientes blog. Here's some pics of it:

Last night was our regular salsa night. Our teacher is going off on a 2 month holiday in a couple of weeks and before she goes she's throwing a little salsa party, so for this party she's trying to get us all doing a new routine. It turns out this new routine isn't a new routine made of old moves, but completely new moves. We must have learnt about 5 new moves last night, and it was all pretty quick fire. It was hot and humid in the room, but it was nevertheless good fun.

Quite often, after our salsa lessons, we go off to a pub called The Angel in Ferndown to cool down with some of the other guys from the class. And tonight was no exception. We chatted until it was throwing out time and we all dispersed into the carpark to head home. However, the fears I had as we left our salsa class were confirmed when my car wouldn't start.

It's been acting a little strange over the last week - the revometer stopped working and the charging light has been very subtley flickering at me, many a time forcing me to consider my own sanity at whether it was actually flickering or just a trick of the light. But as we left salsa the car grumbled a bit when it started.

"That's a bit odd", I said to Daisy. "I hope it will start after the pub."

Of course, it wouldn't. Completely dead. It was 11:40. I had no choice but to call my Dad, whose bedtime is never further into the night than 10pm. Like the selfless guy he is, he of course came out and collected us and my car would stay the night in the pub carpark.

Early this morning we collected some jump leads and headed back to the carpark where the car dutifully started first time while connected by the umbilical cord to my wife's car. I drove it to my parents, so tomorrow I guess I'll be helping my overworked (yet retired) Dad to find out what's wrong. Probably a knackered alternator.

I was out watering the plants the other night (which are coming along spiffing, incidentally) and I spotted that our pumpkin plants had begun to grown tendrils - just like Biscuits had.



Tendril things.

Not sure what they are for, as I know pumpkins aren't climbers but ground covering plants. That's why they needed 6ft of room to grow. Anyway, when I get around to looking them up in my wonderful Encyclopedia.

On a more positive note, one of my sunflowers has come into bloom! It's not anything like as big as it should be - all the others are still growing - but it seemed content with 5 foot and has come into flower. Very pretty it is too:



Golden Sunflower



Just for scale, you understand.

This evening, after watering our plants, my wife suggested I need to get rid of the mop that was growing all around my head (see previous photo). I am very glad to have my wife chop my hair for me - it saves a fortune! She uses a set of clipper things onto which you can attach combs that fix the cut length. She was merrily cutting away and thud the comb fell off. "Oops" I heard, and a hand was placed over the offending crime scene, as if to hide it from me. This is what she's done to my head... I've got a dent:




I'll have to rename myself Arthur.

Oh my God, this has to be what the office workers in heaven use. It's awesome. I gotten my new monitor today (for half the retail price thanks to Ebay) and it's amazing. It's actually better than I thought it would be (strange thing to say, I know, but I've always found TFT monitors to be darker than CRTs, but this one certainly isn't). It's a 24" widescreen running at a resolution of 1920x1200, which gives arces of screen estate. Here's a pic:


Dell 2405FPW

You can see I've been going through some of my photos for various entries into the photo memes that run each week. I've entered the "Summer" competition at Pxite.com (pronounced pic-site) which was previously i-gizmo. I also entered a few others. I managed a joint-2nd in the most recent competition, "Fluffy", at Macroday.

Just as I was getting into macro photography, and actually getting some use out of the ring flash that I bought quite a few years ago, it goes and gives up the bloody ghost. It cost £60, but, of course, the place I got them from don't sell them anymore... so... I need to get a new one and it'll probably be loads more expensive... perhaps I ought to just buy a better quality one. Bah

This morning I went up to my parents' place in the hope that my monitor would be delivered today - alas it wasn't... couriers tend not to work on Saturdays (or do B2B stuff only), so I was prepared for it not to arrive. However, I took the opportunity to take my camera up to my folks and snipe around their flowers for bugs to take pictures of. I was fortunate to see quite a few bugs I've not yet had the chance to take photos of previously.

In particular, I came across the stunning display of aviation by a hoverfly. These are a couple of the pictures I got (click the images to get a larger view).

Hoverfly sitting on a Marigold


Hoverfly in flight


I have set up another blog to which I post photos (almost daily). Due to a tendancy I have to sit with my feet curled over, this site is called CurlyToes Photography. Hope you'll drop in and leave me some comments on my attempts at photography.

I really must stop buying stuff. Well, maybe. I just bought myself a monitor. A rather nice monitor. It's a TFT and will replace my fine, but rather old, CRT. For an hour now I've been having the usual guilt attacks that spending so much money, basically unnessecarily because my old monitor is fine, is very bad. I could keep that money. Save it.

But what would I do with it then? Spend it, of course. So I might as well just spend it now, innit? It's not putting me in debt to buy this monitor. In fact, my account is still quite rosy. So, what's the problem?

Well, the problem is that my wife doesn't spend much money. She has almost no hobbies. I don't mind this, but it does make me feel bad that I spend so much money and she doesn't. I'm not sure if it's because I feel I should be saving (as it seems its something she believes in), or if it's because I know one day she'll have a big blow out, and I won't be able to help with it :o) I'm not sure I feel I'm spending our money, therefore using some of her share.

Anyway, whatever the reason for feeling bad, I've decided not to bother, as the deed is done. I should just enjoy the anticipation of receiving it.

This is a recipe from Cakes & Cake Decorating by Angela Nilsen, Sarah Maxwell and Janice Murfitt. I had bought a bunch of apples from the Co-op recently to make another Spiced Apple Cake, however, I spotted another recipe in the same book that I just had to try out.

Ingredients
For the Topping
75g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
40g margarine
25g caster sugar

For the Base
50g margarine
75g caster sugar
1 egg
115 self-raising flour
2 apples; peeled, cored and sliced
50g sultanas

First things first - preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease and line a cake tin (7"/18cm). I don't have a 7" cake tin so I used an 8" loose-bottomed one. It just meant that the cake was a little thinner and wider.

To make the topping sift the flour and cinnamon into a bowl and rub in the margarine until it resembles an ice sculpture of George Bush - or breadcrumbs if you prefer. Stir in the sugar. That's it.


Ice Sculpture of George Bush

To make the base, put the margarine, sugar, egg and flour into a machine and beat the hell outta it for a couple of minutes until it's smooth. That's it. Spoon it into the cake tin.



Get your apples and sultanas and mix them up a bit, and plonk them atop your cake base in your cake tin.

Sprinkle over the topping to cover the apples. That's it. That's really it. Just bung it in the oven for an hour.

When it comes out, leave it to cool in the tin for about 10-15 minutes before taking it out, and carefully removing the paper.



Just like mother's apple crumble, this cake is probably best served warm, and almost certainly best with oodles of hot custard!

This weekend we went back up to Wales to see my mother-in-law. A couple of months ago mother-in-law decided she was going to move down nearer us. She thought that to make her house more sellable she'd rip up the carpet and get some new furniture - which meant getting rid of the old stuff, of course.

However, 2 months later her house is still in that state, so visiting has come particularly uncomfortable. However, we did at least go and visit a number of sofa shops full of desperate salesmen hovering around the doors all trying to be first to pounce on the unsuspecting customers.

<welsh>"Hello, my name's Roger... come in, make yourself comfortable.. would you like a coffee?"</welsh>

We found some very nice sofas. I can certainly recommend the Alexander from DFS.

"Hi, how're you getting on? Our sofas come with a buy-now-pay later policy, and I'm sure we can do a deal for you."

Later, Mother-in-law would drag out of the poor salesman the actual deal they might be able to offer.

"Don't forget my name - it's Roger. I don't want you to forget because I gotta reach my targets."

Of course, Mother-in-law walked out of the shops leaving a trail of broken-hearted salesman behind. "I never intended to buy today - I like to do my research"

Anyway, we got back home just in time to see the men's final, and watch Andy Roddick get thouroughly Rogered. Not by a sofa salesman, though.


Wimbledon Watching

Yes, I had to watch it from the floor.

A researcher's work is never complete
being told what to do by academia's elite,
Sometimes its quiet with nothing to do,
the next its chaos with a deadline due.

When the end of a project is drawing near
paperwork looms, and it all ends up here,
I thrash at my keyboard 'til my hands ache
stopping only for an "Ebay search" break.

A late night ensues as the deadline nears
both the profs and the lab rats avoid their peers
Papers are written, documents made
code is published - hope it makes the grade.

The final report is due at noon
how has the deadline come so soon?
You'll chuck it together until it it shines like new,
and who gets first author? The prof - not you!

It's then back to "research" - drinking coffee, sitting around,
perhaps reading a paper, tweaking some code you've found
until the next deadline, the prof informs you
"It's noon tomorrow the main report is due."