During unexpected drinkies after finding out a friend's son was having a birthday. More drinkies Thursday after the bi social, as another friend has hidden their birthday till the last minute and I tend to forget dates.

Anyway, it is commonly known in mythology that muses help in the creation of great works. These are beautiful and inspiring goddesses who drive the artist to create their masterpiece..

However, to extend the idea a bit further, what if - in addition to the classical muses, the artists who aren't quite as good get a correspondingly lesser muse.

Then consider just what horror is lurking in the corner when certain popular songwriters are 'composing' ;)

You have a pastie, you have chutney or pickle. Said chutney or pickle will not open with use of hands or tea towel and there is no jar opener in the house.

Can't be bothered trying to heat the lid, what do you do?

That's right! You open up your rucksack and pull out your Sealskinz ultragrip waterproof gloves. It works.

Shiny, shiny kitchen cupboard of capaciousness! :)

Friday night was spent putting the legs on the kitchen cupboard and tidying before the pub.
Saturday I put the doors on it and started to fill it up. Curry and drinkies that night.
Sunday - more tidying and chucking all the unsightly plastic storage into the shed now the items are in Shiny Larder Cupboard. Tidied under the stairs. Tidied and organised parts of bedroom.

It's all coming together nicely - next on the list are a pan hanging rack (possibly a circular one), a laundry rack hanging from the ceiling and shelves on the wall for speakers in the kitchen.

Also read crap books and had fun with Google Maps and the Internet looking at Scottish islands and other bits of the UK.

This week heralds kayaking, computer fettling, drinkies and other stuff.

Today, I have been tidying and relaxing by reading about Scottish islands. This has led on to finding a new British explorer.

There are many outstanding British explorers - those who push the limits like Ranulph Fiennes, those who take part in splendid travelogues like Michael Palin and then... there's Stuart 'Captain Calamity' Hill..

Very briefly played Vampire the Masquerade : Redemption last night (cheap ebay purchase) - the Xplosiv 1.1 patched release works fine in Vista x64, incidentally.

After the intro shows a crusader being injured and cared for in a church, you are thrust into the action to slay two monsters attacking a nun, barely being able to drag yourself out of bed and sinking to the floor after defeating them.

The next morning, the nun casually mentions that the silver mine is infested with monsters and you have two conversation choices :

1) I'll go tomorrow and slay them all!
2) I'd love to, but perhaps in a month or two when I'm better.

As an amazing player, you are probably expected to chose 1). I chose the more realistic 2). The nun told me 'month or two? more like a year!'.

*ert* *ert* *railroad alert*

Enter the deacon or similar. 'The church is not safe. Tomorrow you will go into the silver mines and fight the monsters therein' (and undoubtedly get bitten by a vampire providing the whole point of the game).

Gee, thanks, railroad man..

Was rather tired on Friday so didn't make it to Midlife Crisis and instead went locally for pubbage. Got to bed at a reasonable time for once.

Saturday featured Soup, shopping for a mask for the halloween party and a bike ride (not a huge success - chain came off twice and I lost my rear light..). Halloween party featured nice chat, wine and more wine.

Sunday - utterly foul outside. Stayed in and fiddled online, played a bit of Oblivion and cooked shedloads of pasties.

This week is fairly busy. Kayaking tonight, biphoria tomorrow, K Wednesday, kayaking fireworks do Thursday, probably pubbage Friday and meal and trip on the Manchester Wheel Saturday.

Doom roguelike

Yes, it's Doom as a roguelike(!).

Don't know what a roguelike is? Well, it's a game like Rogue ;).

Rogue is ancient though, try Nethack instead.

Yes, it looks unbelievable primitive, and then you try and play and find it's a bit more complex. There's much more advanced examples than Nethack too..

Last night I cooked African peanut stew. It's rather yummy and fairly quick to cook, although the preparation is a bit lengthy.

In particular myself and K accidentally shelled 3x as many peanuts as required. Shelled, unsalted peanuts don't seem to be stocked in Tesco and other places.

This was also the first time I'd used yam, possibly the first time I've used okra and one of the rare occasions I've used cabbage. Yam is really quite different from sweet potato and was worth the effort in finding one.

In difference to other recipes, the one linked appears to feed four extremely large people. I had three portions left over, and didn't even use all the yam they suggested.

Need to find other yam recipes to use the remainder up.

In other exciting food news, I was rather put out to find Tesco no longer sell muesli base. The remainder of the muesli is either filled with milk or hideously expensive. Muesli Quest has begun!

I shall probably find some oats, bran etc in large quantities, but until then I've been trying various supermarket offers that feature no milk or banana.

Somerfield do not score well.. They meet the criteria, but it's pretty tasteless. Next up, Asda organic muesli and Asda smartprice muesli.

I object to spending lots of money on cereal; all the decent tasty cereal is correspondingly expensive. Muesli is a good alternative. The other option is toast, but I prefer muesli in general, even if toast gives me the opportunity to try gooseberry jam. mmm.

2D Boy are having an 'any price you want' sale until October 25^th for World of Goo (neat indie game, supports Windows, OS X, Linux. Also available for Wii, but that was ported by a third party).

Now, even by itself it's unusual for companies to run experiments like this and there are discussions over whether this is a thank you to fans, an experiment in pricing, a canny attempt to squeeze more profit out of it after a year of $20 sales or a combination of all three.

What's really interesting, however, is that they've revealed their sales figures including the break down of payments and comments. There's an interesting analysis of the raw data here.

You can draw your own conclusions, or better still check out the World of Goo demo and throw them a few quid or more if you like it.

Apricot sauce :

Two tins (˜200g or so each) of apricot halves, with juice of one tin
one tsp cumin

simmer for a few minutes. Add one tsp balsamic vineger, one tsp soy sauce, blend in food processor.

'Pie'

1½ reasonably sized sweet potatoes
enough washed red lentils to match it
chopped dried apricots
simmer until sweet potato starts to soften, mixing in a small amount of the sauce and adding water if it's too dry
When ready add most of the rest of the sauce so that it's moist but not sloppy

Create 'pie' by layering tortillas and mixture

Put in oven at 200°C for 20 minutes. eat.

Serves 3