This is just silly. I have 50 – yes, count ’em – 50 GMail invites. Nope; 49, now. If you want one, shout. And yes; Becky, I’ll sort one for you as soon as you tell me where to e-mail it to.
Category: Personal
He’s Ten Times As Slick As The Last Time You Saw Him!
You might think it’s sick… sawing a pigeon in half with a stick, but… Magical Trevor is back, and everyone loves him more than ever!
Dreams Of Scrabble
Odd dream last night:
Claire, Matt, Sian, Andy R and I were sat in a circle on the large pavement outside the dry cleaners on Great Darkgate Street, Aberystwyth, playing Scrabble. I wasn’t very comfortable sat where I was (between Claire and Sian), so I swapped places with Matt (between Sian and Andy), which was much better, but made remembering who’s turn it was somewhat more difficult. Not that I was doing very well, anyway – I’d already had to use my first turn to discard my entire hand of tiles and draw again, as I had started with 3 C’s, 2 D’s, and 2 B’s, which is almost useless unless somebody plays a word like “Adore” and you can make it past-tense by appending a “D”, or a word like “Ape” which you can put a “C” in front of.
In any case, Matt tried to play a thirteen-letter word (including a hash [#], which he’d drawn-on to one of the “blank” tiles with a marker pen), and I challenged that it wasn’t a real word. He claimed that it was a song title, and everybody seemed happy with that (despite never having heard of the song), except for me: I tried to explain why the rules stated that you couldn’t use proper nouns, but nobody was listening. Then we packed up the board and started walking towards The Flat.
On the way, Claire tried to persuade Sian that she shouldn’t have left the hospital.
Well; that’s all I’ve got for you. I’ve just gotten X-Com: Apocalypse to work under Windows XP by using a wonderful little tool called DOSBox, a cross-platfrom DOS emulator that’s significantly better than “Command Prompt” (cmd.exe) in Windows NT/2K/XP/2K3 (sound support [through emulation], VESA, etc.). That’ll keep me amused.
typoGenerator
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Eternal Picture Flash @ eBaumsWorld
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Picture that goes on and on forever as you zoon in
Recipe Of The Evening
Got a recipe suggestion for you all, again: Bryn’s Challenge is at least allowing me to be a little bit more imaginative and try making things that “come to mind” (the bad ideas don’t make it here). So, today’s meal – which Claire assures me is “really, really good”, is presented below:
Chicken And Bacon In A Mushroom & Leek Sauce, With Stuffed Potatoes
Easier than it sounds; make it and show off. Serves 2, but will scale well.Ingredients
6 chicken goujons
6 rashers rindless bacon
1 medium-sized leek, thickly sliced
200g mushrooms, thinly sliced
4 slices cooked ham, finely cut
2 medium potatoes
50g tomato paste
50g grated extra mature cheddar cheese
Half pint milk
Plain flour
1 tablespoon dried onion/chive mix
Pinch of saltMethod
Microwave or bake the potatoes until softened, as baked potatoes. Wrap each chicken goujon in a slice of bacon and place into a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees celsuis. Meanwhile, boil the sliced leeks, stirring occassionally, until soft and seperated. Warm the milk in a saucepan, slowly stirring in the flour to make a moderately thick white sauce. Add the mushrooms to the milk, then add the cooked leeks and the ham and keep warm. Cut each potato in half and carefully hollow out the insides, leaving the skin and a thin layer of flesh intact. Mix the potato with the tomato paste, dried onion/chive mix and salt, and mash with a fork. Spoon this mixture back into the potatoes, sprinkle with a little cheese, and return to the heat until cheese melts. Serve alongside the chicken and bacon, drenched in the sauce mixture.That doesn’t read very well; if I can be arsed, I’ll re-write it. Anyway: it’s really, really well-worth doing, and looks more impressive than it is, so it’s great to show off with.
Python Regular Expression HOWTO
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Dive Into Python
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Curry With Friends
Went out last night for curry and beers to Cafe All Spice with:
- Jen – professional cynic
- Claire – professional mimic
- Bryn – protestable critic
- Andy – procrastinating graduate
- Sian – political constitutionalist
- and Paul – pineapple coconut
And a fantastic night was had by all, I feel. The food was brilliant, the beers drained themselves as we chatted about geekiness, jewelery, politics, relationships, dialects, body hair, relationships again, pub quizzes, the upcoming Troma Night…
I’ve one or two pictures from my phone to share with you, but I haven’t beamed them off yet, so you’ll have to wait.
Edit: Here’s the nicest of the pictures from the evening, which I’d promised I’d share with you:
Sam’s Spam
I just got swamped by about 150 bits of trackback spam. Not a problem – I know how to deal with it and I was able to get rid of it all in line of SQL code… and it was also interesting to see that I rank highly enough in common searches to find ‘open’ blogs that I was swamped by so much of it, so quickly.
I’ve been spam-free for months, since I implemented my solution to blog spam, which (as you’ve probably seen) involves answering simple (to a human) questions when you place a comment. But this most recent horde of spam worked by using trackback, a system whereby weblogs tell each other if people write relevant “follow-up” content. And, unlike the comments-spam, which I was able to easily prevent, trackback spam is more difficult, and I’m yet to devise a suitable solution (although I have a clever idea).
I wonder if it was the man interviewed by The Register yesterday who was responsible for this attack?
Free Gift For First Hundred Customers
I’m sure that by now you’ll
all be aware of the upcoming opening of Nice ‘n’ Naughty, the latest in a chain of sex shops (the latest of which was opened in Bangor, of all
places), in Aberystwyth. It’ll be opening on Pier Street, on the site of the old Little Amsterdam (who’s web site still states that they have a shop here in Aber, despite the fact that it closed down some months ago) shop
(which I reported on when it opened).
In any case, Nice ‘n’ Naughty is promising a free gift to each of the first 100 Aberystwyth customers, which is kind-of cool, as well as trying to put forward a ‘cleaner’ image than the infamous Little Amsterdam it replaces (so; no drugs, for example, and probably less effort made to piss of their neighbouring shops). If only they have the common sense to employ students (and therefore don’t suffer from the self-inflicted staffing problems Little Amsterdam had) they could be okay.
So: who’s up for a trip to Nice ‘n’ Naughty when they open, next Monday? I’ll try to get their opening hours so we can have a horde of us pounce them when the doors open… and give them a proper Aberystwyth welcome.
Spoons
I can bend minds with my spoon.
That is all.
VCD Quality
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Torrent Site Status
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Mystic Support Site
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