Miscellaneous meanderings and myriad mumblings

Bad and wrong conversations

2009-11-11T13:24:20Z

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' ;)

Lateral thinking : one appears to possess a modicum

2009-11-09T19:47:33Z

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.

Weekend

2009-11-09T13:54:12Z

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.

Great British explorers.. or not

2009-11-08T22:57:17Z

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..

Railroading? Don't know what you mean squire!

2009-11-05T10:16:10Z

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..

Weekend : drink, more drink, biking, computer games, cooking

2009-11-02T13:50:34Z

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.

Computer gaming : this is very, very silly

2009-10-29T14:00:56Z

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..

African peanut stew is yummy, muesli

2009-10-29T12:46:53Z

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.

2dboy - World of Goo sale now on, including publicised sales figures

2009-10-21T14:01:49Z

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.

Sweet potato, lentil and apricot 'pie'

2009-10-18T10:39:40Z

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

Weekend : food, drinkies, reading, domesticity and computers

2009-10-13T15:43:37Z

Weekend included : Nice drinkies with T and a buffet chinese, plus wondering if a washing machine would fall through the dripping ceiling of one of the pubs we went in..

Bike ride on Sunday

Making serious inroads into The Buddha of Suburbia

Plus, a fair degree of computer fiddling. This was because I succumbed to a toy - a 3D monitor.

To cut a moderately long story short - when it works it's exceedingly good. Unfortunately this requires wearing special glasses (fairly usual), getting your head at the right angle and not moving your eyes up and down (horizontally is ok, because this monitor uses horizontally interleaved polarisation).

Watching a fish swim around a coral reef is gobsmackingly good, various computer games and fiddling to get them work are decidedly more variable, 3D pictures so far seem distinctly sub par. The idea some people have that you could have more than one person simultaneously watching it are hopeful to say the least. As a 2D monitor it is also distinctly average and suffers a little from having two panels one behind the other.

There's also the driver issues. Nvidia's Stereo3D drivers only work with 8xxx series cards and above (still on a 7600GT here), except on XP where you can get 7 series cards working with old drivers - this led to a huge hassle with installing XP - eventually worked with a slipstreamed SP2 install disk created using nlite. Didn't work the usual way.

There's also the IZ3D drivers (they also make their own 3D monitors) and Tridef drivers which enable hardware to work with ATI cards too. Time will tell which is the best driver.

It shows promise, but currently doesn't seem to be plug and play.

New terms for sexuality and sexuality scales

2009-10-07T13:25:29Z

Last night at biphoria we redid the sexuality scales and had a long discussion about the difference between such things as attraction, sexual fantasy, sexual behaviour and emotional distraction. That's been repeated many times, so instead I'm offering new identities:

1) Frysexual

Someone who is utterly non judgemental about sexual identity, gender, race, colour, age, intelligence or appearance. The one criteria is that you make a decent fry up in the morning.
May be a bit biased against vegans.

2) The body interest pinup chart.

Not a scale as such, but plots your preferences for partners in terms of things like height, hair, etc, bit presenting a diagram of the body and getting you to fill it in based on interest. Foot fetishists would therefore have a large highlight of the feet and not much elsewhere.

(This not entirely serious idea probably needs a bit of work)

Macharium : demo out - Windows and OS X

2009-10-04T19:36:25Z

Machinarium demo is out - works on Windows and OS X. Flash based bundled into an executable, so with some effort hackable to work under other Unixes.

Main site is here; game is released in ten days or so. Pre-order provides for a small decrease in price, a few high res screens for desktop and some MP3s. Buying direct from the site looks like it will also provide for a full length soundtrack later on.

From the same people that brought you Samorost and others

Tasty vegan recipes

2009-10-01T15:18:17Z

Last night I cooked spiced spinach tofu and watched Dr Who : The Impossible Planet with K (as I have belatedly found out that the P4PE motherboard in my home theatre computer does not support optical drives on the SATA ports).

It was a nicely tasty dish and well worth making again.

Dish for in two weeks time is african peanut stew. Next week I am making pudding as a thank you for taking care of the cats.

tebay (farm shops) services rules

2009-09-28T14:38:02Z

a lovely cup of chamomile tea, a properly baked currant slice and a great view of the lakes.

Definitely a good stopping point if you need to

Cooking

2009-09-20T18:27:28Z

Reminders for myself, cooking wise :

Gram flour is the same as chick pea flour. I did know this, but forgot temporarily.
Groundnut oil=peanut oil. Why, why ffs? Technically there are other groundnuts than peanuts, but in practice it's peanut oil. This is one of the few instances where other countries have more sense than the UK, another one being the US' use of 'blood sausage' instead of 'black pudding'.
On the other hand, the US uses the system of 'cups' which is quite possibly one of the most braindead measuring schemes ever, only slightly improved by the easy availability of a set of cups in a supermarket.
Chilli oil (chilli infused olive oil) as opposed to sweet chilli sauce. Comes in a small bottle with a plastic covering because it's a higher end dipping sauce. Newsflash : oils are not wine and a plastic covering should not be used when the bottle uses a screwcap anyway.

This was all needed for a vegan 'chicken' satay, which wasn't entirely successful (tastes ok, but the sauce was too overpowering). Also used the slightly less common unsweetened peanut butter.

Vegan Pad Thai still remains the finest use of peanuts to date.

Meme

2009-09-15T10:17:57Z

It might be funny, so :

What would I never say? Answers in comments please.

Kudos for responses which do not refer to cats, or anti cat things

Weekend : biking, chilling out

2009-09-14T12:04:19Z

What a splendid washing weekend :).

Friday night I bought Shooooos. Fairly boring shoes, admittedly, but new waterproof goretex Clarks. My last pair, which it turns out have lasted marginally over a year were lovely and comfy but not particularly waterproof and slow to dry out. This pair are just as comfy and I have the shock of walking in new shoes where the heels haven't worn down..

I grabbed a quick chinese whilst I was out, went home and finished the vegan cheesecake followed by pub.

Saturday featured washing up, computer games, bike riding and curry and drinkies with T. I bought and played Samorost 2 on Thursday - fun, if a little short. Checking for something similar brought up the other flash games on the Amanite Design page. Have now played everything except the Questionaut and The Pantry.

I was also distracted by the old Atari Lynx, and managed to score 441 on the BMX section of California Games.

Fortunately I managed some bike riding - a short bike ride on Saturday and a longer one on Sunday. It's been a few weeks since I last rode due to Bicon, Pride, crap weather and feeling a bit unwell, so restarting was a tad tiring but my recovery times weren't bad and I'm definitely improving again.

Still haven't sorted the surround sound in my study out; should shift my arse and get it done soon.

Perhaps if the UK is lucky they'll be another nice weekend, ~~but in two weeks the clocks go back and autumn starts with a vengeance :(~~. No they don't I am a tad forgetful. Another month to go.

Whilst on the subject of fun and diverting flash games

2009-09-10T11:46:43Z

Cat gets 100 stars

Quick, but not as straightforward as it initially looks..

Decent indie games - the upcoming samorost successor : machinarium

2009-09-09T13:05:24Z

Quite some time ago Amanita Design produced the rather sweet Flash based puzzle game Samorost 1. This was followed some time later by Samorost 2 - where only the first puzzle is playable and the remainder costs $5.

Now, their first full length game is available for pre-order : Machinarium. $17 pre-order, $20 on release.

Available for both Windows and OS X, as is Samorost 2. Don't know if it's actually a flash game with a wrapper..

Definitely a company to check out, purely because they dare to try something a bit different.

That misconceptions meme

2009-09-08T09:57:47Z

I've been busy doing Stuff™, so I'm not updating LJ as often. Still, a mild meme catchup.

Misconceptions, and wondering what people think about me that is wrong :

1) I am not vegan, especially since I made cornish pasties last night, with steak and lard. I do however cook lots of vegan food.
2) I am intolerant of dairy products, which is why myth 1) persists. Recently I've found I'm ok with goats cheese.
3) I'm not precisely allergic to caffeine, but have such a high level of intolerance to it that it probably doesn't make much difference.
4) Whilst I am quite fond of my cats, I am perhaps not quite as obsessed as some people think. Most of the time the cats are doing their own thing.
5) Some people think I am at heart a Unix geek. This isn't entirely true - I use the best tool for the job. OpenBSD for firewalling, NetBSD as a shell box - simply because it worked well if the hardware. Vista for main desktop (also, an XP based media PC, a DOS/OS/2 games legacy box and Irix to play with). Once you throw enough memory at Vista x64 it's actually pretty good and pretty much everything works out of the box.
6) Some people presume I am very tidy. a hah hahahahahahahah.
7) It's also not true that my house is a complete tip, although it has at times been rather untidy. Currently the kitchen and the lounge are holding their own, and the study is quickly progressing towards decent organisation.

Any other things you wish to query or suggest, feel free. Comments screened.

edit : unscreening if I think the comment is fairly harmless. Let me know if you definitely don't want to be unscreened.

Weekend : cabling, bbq, boating, drinkies and chilling

2009-09-07T08:50:45Z

Friday : off to Maplin at lunchtime to buy some audio cables to cable up my satellite surround sound speakers in the study, as the bundled cables aren't long enough. Judge that 15m 'is plenty'.

Friday - six hours later. Find that 15m 'is plenty' if you define 'plenty' as 'has a whole 6cm spare'. Next time, buy more, especially when it's only 69p/m. Also note that putting your head down 'for a moment' at 22:30, results in waking up an hour later and a mad dash to the pub to grab a couple of drinks at last orders and catch up with everyone. Stay up to stupid o'clock.

Saturday : Up late, straight to Tesco for BBQ supplies then on for BBQ and bell boat event. On the winning team for bath races. w00t! Straight back home, then off for drinkies and Thai in Manchester with T and S.

Sunday : chill out, sorting out washing and spodding/chatting online. Fail to do much else but thoroughly enjoy it.

7am project

2009-09-05T22:31:05Z

thought i might as well provide an update. Still going well.

The first official friday off was spent at bicon. The second was the first day of pride.

Part of pride friday was spent getting dye and turning my camo purple. The remainder was spent getting down to working out why the x driver for the neostation isnt working on netbsd. A little progress was made but more groundwork is required. Im optimistic it wont be that difficult to fix, but it is an area where my knowledge is limited.

More effort next free friday; many other projects lined up too!

Colour me glad I've kept up with the British Gas homecare agreement

2009-09-01T14:24:38Z

After going on it a year and a half ago to fix the non working boiler with a new £180 controller board, now it needs an >£100 gas valve (it failed in the early hours of Sunday morning). Will be late back to work tomorrow, although from the vagueries of the appointment time this doesn't mean I can actually get up any later than usual.

I suppose technically they're possibly still making a slight profit on me, but given the annual service, the parts cost and labour for at least two visits (let's hope it is only two : I want my hot showers back asap) it can't be much.

It also means I'm forced to tidy the kitchen up and deep clean the landing (in case they need access to the hot water tank). My but the cats deposit a lot of hair on the carpet.

sunday pride

2009-08-30T22:18:18Z

wet and cold but not bad. Proms ok but the singer kept going outside the range she was capable of, nice drinkies and chat.

Only minus point was sackville gardens being closed for the womens space and men practically being told to fuck off as soon as the proms finished. Several men and women not happy with that pr failure. Its not only women that like to stay away from the main stage either.

On the bright side human league played an amazing set. No faffing about - just lots of quality music. Excellent.