Blog

  • Inspired cooking by Mr. Oliver

    As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve added on the right side of the site a link to the Jamie Oliver website, more exactly the recipes section.

    The man is an inspiration when it comes to simple tasty cooking! His salad of roasted squash, proscuitto and pecorino is one of the tastiest and easiest meals I’ve ever made. Any of the recipes welcome personal adaptations so well, you can usually make do with what you’ve got in the fridge, as opposed to those rigid and precise recipes where a single ingredient missing makes it impossible!

    How can you resist?

    Jamie O

    Go on, cook something exciting tonight!

  • Yo sushi!

    After a long day at work, I still had a craving to make some lovely homemade sushi… so I did. It’s a relaxing process up to the actual rolling, which always worries me in case I don’t roll it tight enough and end up with a mess of rice and fillings! Of course, as usual, it went perfectly well, and it was taaaaaaaasty!

    Sushi kicks ass 🙂

  • MmmmMMmm new hair colour!

    I dyed my hair last night for the first time since the wedding, and I LOVE the colour! It’s bright and bold, it’s a burgundyish purpley dark red 🙂

    It’s called “Ultra-violet Dark Red” and it holds up to its name quite well. I’m sure it’ll fade sooner than later but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, and I’ll try and take a photo later today!

  • Robbie album sold on Memory Card

    Thought you were hip and happening with your new ipod mini? Well, think again!

    Now, some albums are available on memory cards for phones and PDA’s, I read in BBC News a few days ago.

    It seems to make sense, since we carry our mobile phones with us all the time, it makes one less gadget to lug around. Of course, I can’t imagine you’d have nearly as much music on your phone as you would have on even the ipod mini (4gigs) or the regular ipod (20 or 40gigs), but it can do the job for a train journey to work and back! And why not just get it as an mp3 album from a legal or not-so-legal source and put on an mp3 cd, an mp3 player or a computer? To each user its own platform!

    Talking about the ipod, doesn’t the full-size ipod look ugly compared to the new sleek mini one? I bet in a few months, Apple will come out with a mini-looking full-size-harddrive version. If they do, I’m getting one!

    It’s so cute 🙂 Me wants!

  • 1970s Office

    On Thursday night, before our Sky Plus box crashed, I watched most of the 1970s Office, a new Sky One show.

    Assigned that seventies’ favourite, The Space Hopper, they will work towards their ad campaign pitch. For two weeks, our hand-picked advertising luvvies will be forced to live and work without any of the trappings of the 21st century – luxuries that most of them probably don’t even realise they take for granted. They will have just ten days to complete the pitch before presenting their ideas to a panel of the good and the great in the ad industry.

    It was quite a good show, and some of the ad ideas were better than I expected! I’m looking forward to seeing how the campaigns evolve into a real pitch to present in two weeks. I really recommend the show to anyone who’s in the UK to catch it!

    Edited on 22/11/04: Just for all the people who are doing Google searches and landing on my site when looking for what has happened to the show, please visit the 1970s Office mini-site, click on Chat and check the forums. People are posting updates on when it’s on! I’m still trying to get to the bottom of the story to know why it got changed from Prime Time to middle of the night! Email Sky One to complain if you liked the show too at contact@skyone.com — I’ll change the email address if I get a more direct/precise one.

    For the time being, this is what I found schedule-wise (I hope you have Sky Plus!!)

  • Saturday 27th (or Sunday 28th, got conflicting info) at 2:40am on Sky One
  • Keep a close eye on Sky One Mix as well, as they’ve played a few eps. If anyone knows why the show was slated and shoved to the middle of the night, let me know!

    Edited on 23/11/04: I got an email from Sky One:
    Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, the show has been moved to the late night schedules and the last two shows will now be shown on Saturday 20th November at 4am and Saturday 27th November at 2:40am.

    All the best,
    http://www.skyone.co.uk

  • Music at work

    In the past two days, I’ve been working almost entirely on my own, so I’ve been able to listen to some music at the same time. I’ve really enjoyed it! I’m so much more focused when I have music cutting out the outside noise.

    The albums I’ve listened to so far are:
    Baxter – Baxter
    Baxter – About This
    LTJ Bukem – Logical Progression albums
    Ani DiFranco – Pretty much all the albums + a couple of live shows
    Portishead – Dummy
    Tricky – Maxinquaye
    Jamiroquai – Travelling without Moving
    Goldfrapp – Black Cherry
    Les Miserables & Chicago
    Verdi, Mozart, Schubert & Chopin

    There must’ve been some jazz in there too at some point…

    Either way it’s great to be able to listen to music while working. Some ppl can’t deal with it, but I absolutely love it! Now I’ve got two hours left before I can go home and have a nice glass of cold Villa Maria! MmMmmmmm

  • Up in smoke!

    You know how I said we got Sky Plus a few weeks ago? I sang it’s praises, told everyone about it… Hell, they should be paying me for it!

    Anyways, today, poor little blighter, choked at the end of a recording, and then poof, in a cloud of smoke, its little soul left for electronics heaven (is that where all the calculators go?). Imagine if it went to electronics hell, it would probably sit there in the middle of thousands of NTL boxes!

    So we’ve called the tech support and they’re sending an engineer around on Saturday to replace it. We’ve asked for a new box, so hopefully this won’t happen again!

    Oh the quirkiness of technology!

    … Awaiting your comments, Neil.

  • Ughh!!

    Sorry for the lack of posts…

    Work is a bit frustrating, they’re asking us for the moon and giving us a cornerstore fireworks rocket as means to get there… It’s no one’s fault in particular, we just need a really good in-house programmer or something 🙂

    *grumbles*

  • Cappuccino of my heart

    Ahh Monday mornings at work… Need a cappuccino to wake me up!

    At least today, I’m not as sore as I was yesterday when I woke up! Saturday morning, we went karting again in Letchworth, but this time for the full half hour. It was great fun, even though a couple of the boys might need some anger management courses, if you ask me… I don’t think we’re supposed to leave the track with a whiplash! *rubs neck*

    I came 6th out of 7, but definitely felt like I could’ve done better! The track was cold, the karts were cold, so it took quite a few laps before I felt I had any grip on the ground below me!

    It was my dad’s birthday yesterday so I called him to wish him a good one, but it’s not quite the same as being there to celebrate with my family… *sigh*

    As for this week, it needs to be a healthy eating week, no more pizzas, pastas and Tex Mex restaurants… and most of all, no more eating at the Moorhen pub, ever! It’s probably some of the crappiest pub food I’ve ever had!

  • Best Jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2004

    Because it’s Friday afternoon and we could all use a giggle… 😉

    The dodo died. Then Dodi died, Di died and Dando died… Dido must be sh*tting herself.
    – Colin & Fergus at the Pleasance

    My parents are from Glasgow which means they’re incredibly hard, but I was never smacked as a child … well maybe one or two grams to get me to sleep at night.
    – Susan Murray at the Underbelly

    Is it fair to say that there’d be less litter in Britain if blind people were given pointed sticks?
    – Adam Bloom at the Pleasance

    A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said, “Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?” I said, “All right, but we’re not going to get much done.”
    – Jimmy Carr at the ICC

    I realised I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat.
    Marcus Brigstocke at the Assembly Rooms

    My dad’s dying wish was to have his family around him. I can’t help thinking he would have been better off with more oxygen.
    – Jimmy Carr at the ICC

    You have to remember all the trivia that your girlfriend tells you, because eventually you get tested. She’ll go: “What’s my favourite flower?” And you murmur to yourself: “Sh*t, I wasn’t listening … Self-raising?”
    – Addy Van-Der-Borgh at the Assembly Rooms

    The world is a dangerous place; only yesterday I went into Boots and punched someone in the face.
    – Jeremy Limb, at the Trap

    Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.
    – Jimmy Carr

    I saw that show, 50 Things To Do Before You Die. I would have thought the obvious one was “Shout For Help”.
    – Mark Watson, Rhod Gilbert at the Tron

    Got a phone call today to do a gig at a fire station. Went along. Turned out it was a bloody hoax.
    – Adrian Poynton at the Pleasance

    Employee of the month is a good example of how somebody can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.
    – Demetri Martin at the Assembly Rooms

    The right to bear arms is slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears.
    – Chris Addison at the Pleasance

    My dad is Irish and my mum is Iranian, which meant that we spent most of our family holidays in Customs.
    – Patrick Monahan at the Gilded Balloon

    Sleeping with prostitutes is like making your cat dance with you on its hind legs. You know it’s wrong, but you try to convince yourself that they’re enjoying it as well.
    – Scott Capurro at the Pleasance

    A dog goes into a hardware store and says: “I’d like a job please”. The hardware store owner says: “We don’t hire dogs, why don’t you go join the circus?” The dog replies: “What would the circus want with a plumber”.
    – Steven Alan Green at C34

    Hey – you want to feel really handsome? Go shopping at Asda.
    – Brendon Burns at the Pleasance

    I like to go into the Body Shop and shout out really loud “I’ve already got one!”
    – Norman Lovett at The Stand

    It’s easy to distract fat people. It’s a piece of cake.
    – Chris Addison at the Pleasance

    I enjoy using the comedy technique of self-deprecation – but I’m not very good at it.
    – Arnold Brown at The Stand

    If you’re being chased by a police dog, try not to go through a tunnel, then on to a little seesaw, then jump through a hoop of fire. They’re trained for that.
    – Milton Jones at the Underbelly

    I was walking the streets of Glasgow the other week and I saw this sign: “This door is alarmed.” I said to myself: “How do you think I feel?”
    – Arnold Brown at The Stand