July 25, 2005
EUjet have gone into administration today. Shame, the two flights we've had have been great - on time and comfortable.
Posted by Jane at 5:50 PM
July 20, 2005
We had a pretty calm and relaxing weekend. Friday evening involved a few pints and some great food (as always) at The Dorset. And on Saturday we headed off to the impressive Sand Sculpture Festival followed by a couple of cocktails at the elegant Black & White Cocktail Bar at Hotel Seattle. Lovely!
Posted by Jane at 9:55 PM
July 15, 2005
Ever since going to Calcutta, I've been experimenting with Indian cookery. I recently bought An Indian Housewife's Recipe Book which has some great, and simple, recipes in it - current favourites are fresh spinach curry and also beef kebabs (which I use as burgers on the bbq). My only other Indian cook book is Indian Cooking Class which again has some tried and tested recipes in it. Today, Richard sent me a link to BBC - Food - Recipes - Indian essentials which seems to have some good background information, as well as links to some more interesting looking recipes to try one day.
Posted by Jane at 10:44 PM
- Indian cookery
Ah well, you've hit my favourite subject here. You've got sattelite TV? Watch anything by Keith Floyd and Madhur Jaffrey. As for books, the Jaffrey one accompanying the series is good. I have another fat one of no particular pedigree which forms the basis for riffing off various dishes.
Want to know the Big Secret that will give your dishes a lift? Salt. Lots of salt. At least half a teaspoon in boiling rice. A teaspoon mixed in with your coriander/cumin/turmeric/chilli spice mix.
Having an Indian friend with the archetypal "mother" helps, if you can get to watch over her shoulder too :-)
Posted by Dave Hodgkinson on 2005-07-21 09:30:10
July 14, 2005
An interesting article on This is Money today about a Cognitive Reflection Test. The questions are:
I had a quick search around the internet, and discovered that I'd got 2 out of 3 right, but I probably wouldn't have managed that in an interview situation. This might be the logic puzzles I was looking for to add to our interview pack. Posted by Jane at 2:18 PM
- A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How many pence does the ball cost?
- If it takes five machines, five minutes to make five widgets, how many minutes would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
- In a lake there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how many days would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?
- Easy!
Got all three right - just trick questions! Not sure what they prove, really, except whether you have a suspicious mind ;-)
Posted by Jonathan Baldwin on 2005-07-20 21:17:00
July 13, 2005
We took a cycle down to the Sand Sculpture Festival this evening. Nothing much visible from outside due to the high fences they've put around, but we did manage to get a glance from the main road. I'm sure we'll head off during the summer sometime and pay the admission costs (£6 for adults, and £4 for children) to go and have a proper look around.
Posted by Jane at 8:07 PM
July 11, 2005
Even after the activities of Thursday, we decided to go ahead with our plans to spend some of the weekend in London catching up with friends. We stayed overnight at Club Quarters Gracechurch street which was really pleasant - and somewhere I can see us returning to. We caught up with Neela, Ste, Ash and Mitül over in Greenford and got to visit both VB & Sons Indian supermarket (discovering all manner of new vegetables) and try some really wonderful Indian and Pakistani food at Five Hot Chillies in Sudbury (nominated for a 2005 restaurant award).
On Sunday, after a lovely stroll over to Tower Bridge, we headed off on the DLR and caught up with Suz and Greg over at their new place overlooking the Royal Victoria Dock in Docklands - a really spacious airy flat with a really relaxing view out over the water.
Posted by Jane at 9:20 PM
I've been away in San Francisco for a conference. Pictures are now available. Things of note...
The Virgin Atlantic flight was one of the best I've been on. The on-demand entertainment was good, but the happy helpful staff made the biggest difference. Being able to send SMS from the plane was fun (US$2.50 to send; US$2.00 to receive), although my message was basically "hey, cool, I'm 32 thousand feet above Greenland!". It seems like the message really did go at that time -- rather than waiting to land, which I would consider to be cheating. Alas, the replies sent never made it to my seat.
Thank you Loren for taking us to Foreign Cinema for dinner. My first Mojito -- what a fool I've been for missing out on this for so long.
We stumbled into Massawa on Haight St for some yummy East African food. Must remember for next time.
And finally.... Somehow -- and I've no idea how -- Goul got onto the subject of Fainting Goats. In case you can't see the video on that link, these look like normal goats, but when they get scared their legs stiffen and they fall over.
It wasn't until I got home that I realized I'd seen fainting goats in real life on a previous trip to California. I didn't see them fall over. I think there might have been a sign saying not to scare them.
Putting aside the entertainment value, this was being thrown up as a kind of "you think evolution is good, eh? Well what about these goats?". And you have to admit that fainting because your scared isn't a great survival strategy for an animal. At least not compared to running away from a predator. The usual answer to these kinds of issues is that the creature has no natural predators, but it's different in this case: they've survived because they're fun. New scientist put it like this: "'It's odd to think this breed survived as a pet because people made fun of it,' says Carol Beck of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, whose team found the gene behind the muscle defect" (These goats may have even made it as "mutant of the month" in Nature Genetics, but I can't check because I don't have a subscription.) So there we go: they're mutants that are fun to have around. Case closed.
Posted by Richard at 9:32 PM
There are sand sculptures in Brighton apparently as part of a summer-long sand sculpture festival. I think we'll have to head off down and take a look later in the week.
Update - found some better photos.
Posted by Jane at 8:52 PM
July 08, 2005
Kevan posted a link to an interesting MSG article from the Observer If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?. This is interesting, because I didn't know that headaches are claimed to be a common symptom of eating MSG. I do get headaches when I've eaten too much (whatever, too much is) but a recent work meal at Cosmos, Tunbridge Wells left me with a headache and a slightly drunk feeling - and I hadn't drank anything other than lemonade and water.
From the article: "Some of the names MSG goes under are: monopotassium glutamate, glutavene, glutacyl, glutamic acid, autolyzed yeast extract, calcium caseinate, sodium caseinate, E621 (E620-625 are all glutamates), Ajinomoto, Ac'cent, Gourmet Powder."
I've spotted E621 on a few things recently, and wondered if that was MSG as well...
Posted by Jane at 3:10 PM
I've just booked us tickets to see Stomp in Brighton in October. I booked the tickets online, and it took me 4 attempts to buy the damn things... and then they charged me £1.50 for booking over their "easy internet booking". Worst online purchasing for a LONG time... Bah!
Posted by Richard at 10:59 PM
July 06, 2005
I don't really have anything to add to yesterday's explosions in London. Neither Richard nor I were anywhere near the city yesterday but instead were safe and well in Sussex. At work we had Radio 5 streaming through the internet and like Jonathan we watched slow-loading news pages arrive through our browsers whilst emailing/texting friends and relatives to ensure their safety. Another day that won't be forgotten in a hurry.
Posted by Jane at 7:27 AM
July 05, 2005
I've blogged before that I was supporting the London bid for the Olympics, so I'm amazed and delighted that London has won the 2012 olympics. How cool is that!
Posted by Jane at 11:57 AM
- Yeah but, no but...
We're in the minority in the geek world.
But I think it's cool too.
Posted by Dave on 2005-07-06 18:41:36
- yes, it's really cool!
Posted by Kim on 2005-08-02 16:33:55
July 02, 2005
From del.icio.us/kevan an article about a photographer's trip to Antarctica and some stunning photographs.
Posted by Jane at 12:34 PM
July 01, 2005
I've recently started listening to podcasts on my iPod Shuffle. I've been using iPodder to manage and download them, but the most recent version of iTunes manages them as well.
iPodder - is a separate application, but integrates with iTunes and creates a new playlist for each feed within iTunes. I can then just open up the playlist, and pick out the ones I want and move them onto the Shuffle.
iTunes - has a new option for podcasts, and has listed a lot on the music store. Subscribing is easy, and if you have a podcast you like but can't find on the store, subscribing is as simple as copying the url into a browser window, and then dragging the url into the podcasts window (it took a while to work that out). iTunes doesn't seem to put them into the main library, so instead I pick up the broadcast I want, and copy it onto the Shuffle.
For the moment, I'll run with both and see which one works out better for me in the long run.
Posted by Jane at 10:06 AM
- So...?
So what podcasts do you listen to?
The only one I've found to care about is Radio 4's In Our Time...
Posted by Dave on 2005-07-02 20:44:53
- What podcasts?
Well, I do listen to In Our Time, and also some of the other BBC offerings - From our own correspondent, and In Business. Additionally, gadling (travel stuff), Russell Johnson - The Connected Traveler and WineCast.
Also trying out to some others I've found through iTunes - iTunes New Music Tuesday and Podfinder.
Posted by Jane on 2005-07-03 10:07:50
I went along to the Brighton Bloggers meetup last night at the Earth and Stars (yum, organic bitter). There were some new faces, some familiar faces, and one face I hadn't seen in a while. All in all a most pleasant evening.
Posted by Jane at 1:10 PM
