Source: Weightwatchers “Cook!” (p180), Takes: 20 mins to prepare and 45 mins to cook, Rating: 9/10
Looks like a cake but doesn’t have the texture of a cake – it’s really smooth and melt-in-the-mouth. Usually recipes don’t look like the picture right? Well, this is an exception:
 Mousse cake |
 Not mouse cake |
Source: Weightwatchers “Spicy and speedy” (p5), Takes: 15 mins, Rating: 6/10
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This is quick to make because you use a ready prepared stir-fry veg pack and quorn pieces are quicker to cook that real beef. The chilli is the important ingredient, without them it would be really bland. I prefer it with noodles rather than rice. Excellent weight loss food. |
Source: Weightwatchers”Delicious” (p157), Takes: 30 mins to prepare and 40 mins to cook, Rating: 7/10
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My mum grows her own marrows and cougettes and so used to make Ratatouille all the time as an extra vegetable dish as part of a Sunday roast. So having it as the complete meal felt slightly under-whelming but it’s actually pretty good. |
The pasty on the top helps turn it into a complete meal but I did find I had to have a few slices of bread with it to make it more of a meal.
Sci-fi, 7/10 – January 2009
I suffer from hayfever and it often turns beautiful summer days toxic because of the little flakes of pollen that float through the air like poison. The big theme of this book is nano-technology and I love how the book describes the impact both big and small to humans. The idea of each house having it’s own MC (matter compiler) capable of creating food, clothes, and all sorts of other things is brilliant to think about. The danger of nano-tech is equally well demonstrated, hence the hayfever reference.
I liked the idea that because the world was so advanced, some parts of society had balanced things out by embracing Victorian ways and putting a high value on hand-made things.
I didn’t like that it all got a bit weird towards the end with the drummer tribe and the army of twelve year olds and how influential “the young ladies illustrated primer” seemed to become.
Source: Weightwatchers Cook! (p120), Takes: 30 mins, Rating: 6/10
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Classic vegetarian grub – boring but healthy. Lentils and Spinach are a good source of iron. |
Source: Weightwatchers Spicy and Speedy (p21), Takes: 30mins, Rating: 9/10, Nationality: Moroccan.
The Google Charts API is great but it can’t handle date-based data. Lets say you want to plot some values over a timespan, how do you do it? One way is to sample the data at regular time intervals and plot it as normal. But if the timestamps you want to plot are not regular, the trick is to convert each date into a day offset and plot the offset whilst still labelling the axis with the date text.
This is an example of plotting date-based data on the X-axis:
In, PHP you set the first date as 0 and then work out the day difference for each subsequent date. At the same time you need to store the text label for that date.
$data):
if ($firstDate == "")
$firstDate = strtotime($date);
$dayDiff = round((strtotime($date)-$firstDate) / (60 * 60 * 24));
if ($dayDiff > $maxDay)
$maxDay = $dayDiff;
$googleChartDataX .= $dayDiff . ",";
$googleChartDataY .= $data. ",";
$googleChartLabsX .= "|". date("d/M/y",strtotime($date));
endforeach;
$axisScale = "&chds=0,$maxDay,".min($dataSet).",".max($dataSet);
$axisLabels = "&chxt=x,y,x,y&chxl=0:{$googleChartLabsX}|1:|".min($dataSet)."|".((min($dataSet)+max($dataSet))/2)."|".max($dataSet)."|2:||Time scale||3:||Data values|";
// Display a red line with a black dot at each point
$dataLabels = "&chm=D,FF0000,0,-1,1|o,000000,0,-1,4";
$dataPoints = "&chd=t:".substr($googleChartDataX,0,-1)."|".substr($googleChartDataY,0,-1);
echo "![](\"http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?&cht=lxy&chs=400x150&chg=0,10{$axisScale}{$axisLabels}{$dataLabels}{$dataPoints}\")
";
?>
I created a small WordPress plugin that uses the above code to graph custom field data over time.
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Kix made a cushion from material left over from the curtains. I never realised how complex sewing machines are until now. |
XBox360,3rdPS,7/10 – December 2008
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I played the game in co-operative mode with Kix – we did have fun but the verdict is: Not even as good as Halo 1. |
The best new feature of the game was “Crawl Mode” – When you “die”, you don’t die you hit the ground and get a few seconds to crawl over to your buddy who can heal you. It leads to great “help help, I’m down” shouting where your partner has to stop and help. It’s also good that the enemy does the same so you can kill someone and watch them crawl for help and either sadistically shoot them again or watch another enemy run over and try and help.
Of course, this doesn’t happen if you kill them with a head shot – Head shots result in a head explosion and a fountain of blood globules from the void in the neck. This is as gruesome as I’ve ever seen in a game – hence the “18” rating.
I also found the cover system quite interesting – I liked how it was a bit truer to life but found it meant I was always camped out behind a wall peering out except to re-load which slowed down the action a little. The story was useless, the vehicle levels were generally terrible, the grenades are pretty boring and the bosses were all frustrating – Especially the lake monster. The last boss was not frustrating – he was the easiest boss EVER. He seemed to die in one shot.
Source: Weightwatchers Cook! (p10), Takes: 10 mins to prepare + 20 mins to cook, Rating: 7/10
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Artists have their golden ratio, physicists have their theory of everything and us dieters have our zero point meals. What I like about this soup is that it tastes like it has cream in it but it doesn’t (it’s zero points so it can’t). |
Our house is sprinkled with little geeky elements:
| Subtle: |   |
| Not so subtle:
(If you can spot 5 geeky things in this photo, you yourself are a geek…) |
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| VERY subtle:
(hint: Gnome Logo, “Perl”) |
 
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| Not so subtle:
(The doormat says “welcome” in ASCII Binary. The laptop is running Ubuntu Linux with Compiz snow flakes to add a Christmasy feel.) |
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This tiny box does two important jobs. Firstly it records any video source (as mp4 files) and secondly, it acts as a video jukebox (i.e. connects to the TV and can play video stored on a PC on the network). It’s a pretty useful gadget! |
I’ve been ripping old VHS videos and archiving old camcorder cassette tapes to mp4 and building up a digital library. The Neuros OSD can stream from our Samba share. The video quality isn’t quite as high as hoped, it’s a bit dark but it’s really nice not to have to go through the hassle of copying video onto a USB stick to play it on our XBox 360.
For reference, to make a DVD in Linux (Ubuntu 8.10) out of the ripped mp4 files, first we chop the mp4 files into small relevant chunks (strip out blank noise / adverts / etc). You have to know the start time and end time in seconds of the section you want to chop out:
sudo apt-get install gpac MP4Box -splitx <startTimeOfSectionYouWantInSeconds>:<endTimeInSeconds> inputFile.mp4 MP4Box -hint outputFile.mp4
The above commands leave the original untouched but creates a new file with the snippet you wanted. In takes about 10 minutes to chop out a 45 minute video. Once we have a bunch of snippets, we then use DeVeDe to compile the DVD using mp4 files as the “tracks”.
Web Usability, 9/10 – November 2008
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It’s strange how much you can learn when common sense concepts are explicitly pointed out. This book is short and easy to read because it uses very simple language but it taught me (a new web developer) a lot. |
My favourite points:
In my last week before starting my new job we laid our dining room wood floor:
| Before: |
 Our horrid original carpet |
| After: |
 Our new oak floor (+ French Door and painted walls) |
It took 6 days, £600 and a lot of hammering and sawing. It’s a bit creaky and the room now has a echo but I like it much better than before. I just hope it doesn’t buckle when it comes to summer because there’s a few places where we don’t have a 1.6mm expansion gap.
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I grew to hate our bedroom Hi-Fi because it was so bright at night and also sometimes made an annoying buzz and have wanted to replace it for while. I used Ebay to sell the Legatto II for £190 and buy the Squeezebox Boom for £170 as a replacement. |
The Boom doesn’t have as big a screen as the Squeezebox 3 but the screen automatically dims itself at night which is REALLY good for a bedroom. I’ve been waiting for integrated speakers in the Squeezebox for years, they sound good but the Boom does look a bit small compared to a Hi-Fi, it’s best compared to a radio alarm clock.
