Articles – Page 90

The Subtle Art Of Beer Snobbery

Thanks to Jon for showing me The Subtle Art Of Beer Snobbery. Can’t help but feel that our favourite TastyLager guzzler is trying to make a point, hmm?

Went out few a few last night with Andy R, Claire, and Bryn to welcome Strokey Adam and Emma into town (they’re visiting this week – but not staying for Troma Night <shocker>). It was great to be able tp tag-team with Andy in an effort to make Adam laugh so hard that he wet himself. We didn’t quite manage, but we came pretty close.

Poor Strokey. He’s no less terrified of me than he ever was.

I Don’t Think This Will Work

I received this e-mail from a co-worker this morning. I don’t think it will work, so I’d like to do a test – Jon is particularly good at locking his keys in his car (he managed to do so on Saturday, while driving it, which is quite impressive), so perhaps he’d try this out for me:

> Apparently this works. Good to remember
>
> This only works if your car has remote controlled locks. Also
> you need a CELL PHONE handy at your car.
> Ever lock your keys in the car? If you lock your keys in the
> car and the spare keys (remote) are home, call someone at home on
> your
> cell phone.
> Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have
> the other person at your home press the unlock button on the remote,
> holding it near the phone on their end.
> Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your
> keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles
> away,
> you can reach someone who has the other “remote” for your car,
> you can unlock the doors (or the trunk!)
>
> Editor’s Note: * It works fine! We tried it out and it
> unlocked our car over a cell phone!)

I think this is a hoax – as I understand it, these remote central locking devices send a radio signal, not an audio signal (capable of being carried over a telephone). And before anybody suggests ultrasonic, remember that telephones – and particularly mobile telephones – have a low dynamic range, designed to cater for the human voice (ever noticed how shit music sounds over a mobile phone): this is the same reason that conventional modems can’t be used on a mobile. But now I’m curious, so somebody try it and tell me what happens.

Jon writes about his own stupidity

Bryn’s Challenge – Looking Back

Well; today, Bryn’s Challenge came to an end – so those of us who were participating (and didn’t give up along the way) can go back to our regular amount of fast food once more. I, for one, will be enjoying a Tex Mex burger at Burger King this evening (you’re all welcome to join me) before the Pagan Wanderer Lu gig at The Bay.

I’d like to say that Bryn had given us some kind of life-changing challenge, but he hasn’t. I saved a little money, I partially (I hope) eased Claire off her Burger King addiction, and it was fun: it actually gave me an excuse to be bothered to try things out and come up with a few new recipes where I might not otherwise have.

It looks like it’s going to be a busy weekend for me. I’m helping out with training some students to do volunteer work, Troma Night promises all kinds of fun with the themed “Is this post-modern genius, or just really, really stupid?” night, Geek Night as usual (perhaps we’ll actually play a board game this week!)… plus I’ve got a heap of code I’d like to write for about a dozen little ongoing projects. Busy, busy, busy.

On the up-side, it turns out that I have enough overtime banked that I could actually take a week off as flexi-leave. That’s crazy! Now all I need is there to be little enough that needs doing that I can actually take the time off without feeling guilty!

By the way; I texted AQA (who’ve re-vamped their web site, I see) the other day:

Me: Other than “Day Of The Triffids“, what film has walking plants in it? (Audrey II from “Little Shop Of Horrors” doesn’t walk, it hops)

Several hours later.

Them: AQA: Sorry for the delay. The AQA service is dealing with your question and you should receive an answer shortly.

Later still.

Them: AQA: AQA could not find any other films with walking plants in. Steve Sekely, director of Triffids, also directed Lady in the Death House and Amazon Quest.

If they were going to go for a cop-out answer, they should have gone for Poison Ivy (played by Uma Thurman) in Batman and Robin. Ah well.

Card Protector

Feel free to put this ad banner on your own web site or weblog. And make sure you take advantage of this great service, yourself, too. (by the way, you can’t see this post on Abnib, you’ll have to click here to see it).

The content of this post depended upon Flash, a now-obsolete technology. The joke was that it was a “banner ad” style form advertising a service that checked if your credit card details had been stolen online; all you have to do is enter your card details into this strange suspicious form and it’ll tell you whether your card details have been stolen!

So I’m Sat At Work…

…minding my own business, and some random guy walks in through the office door, looking lost. Nobody seems to get up to see to him, so I – in my new desk, which is quite close to the door – go over to greet him. “Is there;” he begins, sounding a little unsure of himself, “Is there a ‘Scatman’ here?”

Oh; fucking hell, I think. For some reason, I’m reminded of the last time somebody wandered up and confirmed my identity by addressing me by my “blog name”, and it turned out to be a scary stalker type. I try to think back about what libellous thing I might have said this week.

“Hi; I’m from Unigryw (another company in the Technium),” he begins, “I was looking at your web site -“

“Scatmania.org,” I reply, pronouncing the hyperlink with surprising clarity.

“Yes,” he continues, “I was hoping I could use your review of Nice ‘N’ Naughty on LocalTVi.”

So, I let him. Pretty much all the original content on my weblog is covered by a creative commons license anyway, but I just told him he could do whatever he liked with it. And if only LocalTVi had an RSS feed, I’d keep an eye out for my review appearing on it, too. I thought everything had an RSS feed, these days. Ah well.

Thai-Style Turkey & Rice

I’ve always been drawn to trying to prepare a fried-rice dish, but I’ve always been put off by the risk of burning it (I’d have imagined that it would be difficult to prevent rice from over-cooking and sticking to the pan, which would make for far-from delightful cleaning, later). But having watched Ken Hom preparing some egg-fried rice on a TV show earlier this week (he made it look so easy), I thought I’d have a go at concocting a Thai-style fried rice dish.

It was absolutely wonderful, by the way – if you only ever follow one of the recipes I’ve put on my blog, make it this one.

Thai-Style Turkey & Rice
Serves 2/3
Ingredients
3 portions boiled rice (can be ‘leftovers’, or whatever – sorry I can’t give you a real measurement; I always measure rice by guesswork)
300g turkey breast, cut into bite-size chunks (or any other white meat)
~10 medium-sized closed-cup mushrooms, quartered
3 eggs, beaten
1 onion, diced
1 red pepper (I used a ramiro pepper, ‘cos they taste great), diced
1 medium-sized red chilli pepper, thinly sliced and de-seeded
2 tablespoons nam pla (or substitute: soy sauce will do)
Hot red chilli powder
Dried ginger
Dried garlic (would have loved to have used fresh garlic and ginger, but couldn’t be bothered)
Dried lemongrass and kaffir (lime leaves) or generic Thai 7-Spice (or similar pre-mixed spice)

Method
Liberally oil a wok or frying pan and fry the turkey pieces, mushroom, and onion (and garlic and ginger, if using fresh rather than dried) and fry until the turkey is cooked (white all over). Add the pepper and chilli pepper and stir rapidly, while adding dried ingredients (chilli powder, ginger, garlic, lemongrass, kaffir) and nam pla to taste. Don’t be afraid to add more oil if you need to (as the rice will gobble it up when you add it, in a moment).

Reduce the heat and add the rice to the pan, covering all of the other ingredients. Push down firmly upon the rice with the back of a wooden spoon, to force it in among the meat and vegetables. After a few minutes, when the rice has begun to re-heat, pour the eggs over the entire mixture and increase the temperature. As the egg begins to cook (looks like scrambled egg), break it apart with the spoon and stir into the rest of the mixture, mixing all of the ingredients together.

Heat through, and serve.

Flipping marvellous.

Future History Of Comedy

Went to the Future History Of Comedy last night. I’m not going to write about it here, because this is what I would have said.

That post by Andy subsequently got made friends-only, so I’ve republished it here to save you dragging it off archive.org:

Went to a student-run comedy night last night on the promise of seeing Matt in the Hat do some open mic. It was surprisingly good, given that it had the potential to be utterly awful. Only one of the acts was genuinely excrutiating, a girl called Narin who didn’t actually appear to have written anything at all. She basically apologised for her last stand up routine ‘being all about sex’ then went on about how she never got sex because she moaned too much. then went on some obscure tangent about a picture of Clint Eastwood in a Semiotics lecturer and how her lecturer was gay (i think i’ve had that lecture). Anyway she elicited nary a titter.

The other acts were surprisingly good. The compere Barry Pigeon had a confident, if studied, delivery, lots of shouting and swearing and recurring jokes which worked well. The lead balloon/genuinely funny ratio was about 50/50 which is pretty good, and he didn’t let the clanging silence after the shit jokes put him off.

Then there was some guy who’s name i’ve forgotten but who had a pony tail, who wisely tailored his routine to the crowd. “We’re all Students right? That means we like to get DRUNK” kind of thing but managing to be genuinely funny a good portion of the time. A drama student, his obvious confidence helped him through a lot of joke-free waffle between gags. His routine about the Ship and Castle was laboured and lampooning students for talking about thundercats is nothing new, it went down a storm but then i guess the freshers in the audience probably hadn’t heard that kind of thing before.

Next was someone (i think) called Anton, who got talked over a lot so a lot of what he said was lost on me. He talked about cats and cheese and seemed to go down well. He had a very intimidating dark manner, standing very still but he allowed his pose to go a few times by chuckling along with the audience.

Then came an open mic section which Matt apparently decided not to bother with. It began with a guy called Liam who was probably the best of the night. though i can’t really remember much of what he said. routines about circumcision and not being able to dance. He was the most consistently funny but still suffered from nerves when a joke didn’t go down well, and had a touch of waffle about it.

The final act was Goatboy, which was a dramatic two-man sketch show featuring pony-tail guy, and another man who i took an instant dislike to because he was wearing a t-shirt which said ‘Your mum!’. They were good, very much in a League of Gentlemen vein. One sketch in which a man tries to contact his dead mother via a medium and apparently ends up talking to Mr T. Finishing off with a skit in which two monks allude darkly to ‘the curse we do not speak of’ (it turns out to be being gay with each other).

As a night designed to give wannabe student comedians a chance to perform amongst a crowd it was excellent. There were long spells with crap jokes and no jokes but when they hit the mark they were all genuinely good, and surely the point of the exercise is to let them see how different jokes and routines go down. Whether it merits a fortnightly slot remains to be seen. A non-professional comedy night with inexperienced performers relies heavily on the goodwill of the audience, which might not last. Some people last night clearly lost interest and talked through pretty much the whole night (fuck off downstairs if yr not gonna listen) and the danger of this happening will increase as the novelty wears off. The promise of different performers at each night is good but some consistency is likely to bring back casual punters (such as myself) and will give them a chance to build on what they’ve done.

Overall good. I’ve always wished i could do stand up, I’m pretty sure of my ability to make a room full of people laugh as part of a conversation but the moment i start trying to think of what i would say onstage with a mic in my hand i draw a blank. maybe i’ll try and chuck something together for the next one.

Nice ‘N’ Naughty

Claire, Matt, Paul, Sian and I visited Nice ‘N’ Naughty, Aberystwyth’s second sex shop, as it opened at 9am this morning. Other folks who’d promised to come along, such as Jon and Hayley, Andy, and Ruth and JTA, were nowhere to be seen. What follows is, essentially, my “review” of the establishment:

The shopfront itself is moderately discreet, with several mannequins (sporting revealing underwear which – were they not dummies – wouldn’t leave much to the imagination) occupying the window, and a second, inner door carrying the obligatory “18+” warning sign.

Once inside, it’s apparent that a lot of thought has gone into making this shop – like those in it’s chain, apparently – more accessible to those who would not consider themselves “enthusiasts”. The shop is cleanly laid-out and very well-lit, with two different counters: one occupied by a sales assistant of each gender. The nearest counter, which houses the checkout, has several small bottles of “room odourisers” (let’s face it – nitrate inhalants – the only ‘drug’ items sold in the shop), condoms, climax and stay-hard creams, and aphrodisiacs. Before the checkout, on both sides, is a large array of clothing – mostly latex, plain-chain, rubber, and speciality costumes (e.g. nurse). Opposite the checkout are various restraints, spanking paddles, and the like, and beyond them to the right are lingerie items. Some of these were quite amusing and charming, such as the lacy women’s underwear with two tiny bronzed bells hanging from cotton at the front, with the words “tinkle my bell” embroidered above.

Opposite the lingerie begins the range of sex toys. The range is significantly better than that provided by Little Amsterdam: even comparable to that of many websites. The novelty gifts – “romance kits”, phallic and vaginal-shaped soap-on-a-rope – are nearest the checkout, and away from this point stretches an array of dongs, vibrators, pumps, pussies, suckers, ticklers, double-ended-dildos, clamps, crimps, squeezers, beads, strap-ons, eggs, pillows, balls, stimulators, sleeves, plugs, rings, nubbies, straps, and dolls. The prices are comparable to most sex shops, and just a little more than you’d typically find online.

In the centre of the shop there’s a rotatable tamber with a selection of lubricants. Some, such as ID Glide and ID Pleasure (which is highly recommendable) we’re familiar with, but we were tempted into buying a bottle of ID Millenium – the big brother to ‘glide’, which is a non-sticky, silicon-based, premium lubricant that carries a warning, “surfaces, such as bathtubs and tiles, may remain dangerously slippery for days”. Heh.

The staff were open and friendly, and carried a real “can I help you, sir”, attitude, casually chatting with customers who were comfortable with such an approach, recommending products, and always on hand for any questions; but they also kept a sensible distance – not pressing themselves on customers who didn’t seem so eager to talk to them. I spent some time talking to the staff about the store, it’s approach, and it’s plans for penetrating <ahem> the already sex-shop-hostile marketplace here in Aberystwyth.

A little further back, through a passageway at the back of the store, they keep their magazines and DVDs. They’ve currently got a small selection of soft-core porn, but they’re forming their application for a license to sell hard-core porn, too (which, of course, requires special dispensation in the UK. To this end, they’re forming a petition to the council, to illustrate that there is demand in Aberystwyth for hard-core porn (on which, following our visit, there are several signatures).

In the end, Claire and I bought the interesting lubricant and a couple of toys, including the bizarre-looking “Vibrating Rock Chick“. Some of the other folks in our group got things, too, and some didn’t.

So; it’s a nice shop: go visit it, talk to the nice people, but remember, you might get a better price online (if less-good customer service). The “free gift” for the first hundred customers turns out to be a gift voucher of a randomly-selected value, but they haven’t been printed yet, so we’ve been invited to go back and claim them at a future date. Which I’m sure I’ll be doing.

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.

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 salt

Method
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.

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.

First Season Of Diplomacy

As I’m sure I’ve said, I’m running an online game of Diplomacy: my web-based adaptation of a classic 1959 board game of strategy and diplomacy. It’s an unusual board game, in that (apart from the random assignment of countries, at the beginning), it involves no luck – the game is based entirely upon your ability to persuade others to help you, lie convincingly, and know when to trust your allies.

In any case – I thought I’d allow those of you who’re not playing (players are Sian and Andy R [Austria], Claire and I [England], Ruth [France], Andy K and Faye [Germany], Jon and Hayley [Italy], JTA [Russia] and Matt [Turkey]) to see what’s going on, as well, soo…

You can now spectate our game of Diplomacy by viewing the turns, maps, and reports as they are made available. And I’ll be providing updates as and when I feel like it here, on my blog.

In the first turn, most of the Great Powers pushed outwards with their forces, as can be seen in the map, above. I’m particularly interested by the position of the new location of Austrian, German, and Russian armies, in Eastern Europe (and very close together), and by the decision of France to push towards Italy with her land armies (leaving only a ship to perhaps later claim the supply centres of Portugal and Spain). Also interesting is the Turkish ship moving into the Black Sea: which claims to pose no threat to Russia, but I’m not so sure…

As JTA says, it’ll be interesting to see how things pan out as a result of the aggressive stance taken by some – particularly the South-East European – nations. It’s a fascinating little game.

Suppose I’d better get some work done.

Tsunami Relief Concert

On Saturday night, Claire and I went to the Tsunami Relief concert at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, which was pretty fab. We arrived at about 3:15pm, just as things were starting to kick off – on one of the many park and ride services being operated especially for the event. The buses and their fuel were both donated for the evening, and the bus drivers were working as volunteers (but taking donations towards the fund in tubs at the door). We had some confusion over the gate we needed to enter by, which only increased our relief at getting in out of the driving rain. It wasn’t much warmer inside, but huddling with a crowd pushing their way towards the stage quickly warmed us up. The Millennium Stadium is huge. It’s amazing to wander down onto the floor, with tens of thousands of people looking back across it.

The concert was really good – a lot of acts I’d looked forward to seeing: the Manic Street Preachers, Feeder, Eric Clapton and Keane were all fantastic. But between these were a lot of other acts which were surprisingly good – Katherine Jenkins, who performed first, was absolutely wonderful: her rendition of “Amazing Grace” brought tears to my eyes. Lulu was wonderful, Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics was just stunning… even Craig David was more than tolerable as he performed a slow and easy acoustic set. And polishing it off with Jools Holland’s Ryhthm & Blues Orchestra and Eric Clapton jamming away together made a great finish to the evening.

We were both exhausted from about 11 hours on our feet, but it was a great show well-worth seeing. I pity those of you who tried to get tickets but were too late – you missed out.

Sadly, we both lost a point on Bryn’s Challenge – disallowed as we were from taking food or drink into the stadium, we had to resort to the fast food available on-site. We settled for merely having a hot dog each, while the folks we watched on the Troma Night webcam tucked into their pizza, but it’s still disappointing that we had to do so. Ah well.

We got back into Aber at about 3am: Claire took a lie-in on Sunday morning after a sterling driving effort (albeit less of a “sterling driving effort” than when she drove to Stirling, but hey).

BBC “Talking Point” about the concert
BBC News: “Tsunami gig auction to raise more”
Claire buys the tickets on 8th January.