Since the pandemic started, Fiona and I have basically stopped eating out. We figure that in the risk/reward calculation, spending hours in a roomful of strangers in exchange for more convenient and slightly better food that you can make at … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Our essay-crisis dead-cat government is now planning to appease disaffected Brexit voters by giving them Imperial measurements, in place of the metric that we have been moving towards since the 1960s and which the majority is living UK citizens were … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Like everyone else, I’m aware of the Cost Of Living Crisis — or, “recession” as we used to call it in the old days. (Much as we now say “chumocracy” instead of “corruption” for some reason). We’re fortunate to be … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Since I started making my own pizza, I’ve been doing it a lot. I’ve tried all sorts of variations, and made a lot of discoveries [evidence 1, evidence 2, evidence 3]. Today I want to show you four pizzas I’ve … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Internet service providers are hardly known for their service, but with Now TV Broadband I have hit a new low of incompetence and carelessness that just boggles the mind. The spoiler is that tomorr… | Continue reading
One day as we were driving back home from London, cruising along on the M4, Fiona out of the blue said “I want nachos”. I said fine, we’ll pull over at the next services and buy a… | Continue reading
I love a good risotto, but for years I could never get it to be really good when I made it myself. That changed a few months ago when Fiona and I stayed with our old friend Jon Wensley, who made a … | Continue reading
Here is a YouTube playlist of my now-traditional top-ten list of the albums I’ve listened to the most in the previous calendar year. (See this list of previous entries.) I listen much more to whole… | Continue reading
I got a recommendation from a friend to watch the first three episodes of Wandavision in a block. That suggestion was solid. It’s slllooowww to get going, especially, if you’re not bathed in Americ… | Continue reading
When writing, or indeed speaking, do not begin sentences with any of these phrases. “Let’s be clear” admits that, up to this point, you have been obscure. “To be honest̶… | Continue reading
It was 1990 or possibly 1991, and I was working for System Simulation on an Application for Windows 2 – which at that time was a rather exotic extra that a few adventurous people were running on to… | Continue reading
Last time, I made my first attempt at baking tarte au citron (lemon tart). I made several mistakes, which I documented, so yesterday I had another go, learning my lessons from the first time. Here … | Continue reading
Inspired by watching The Great Australian Bake Off, I found myself wanting to have a go at baking a tarte au citron, or lemon tart if you insist. It is essentially an egg-custard tart with a lot of… | Continue reading
As we approach the end of 2021, I have a pretty good idea of what my top ten albums of the year will be, for my now traditional What I’ve Been Listening To post. And one of them is an album I… | Continue reading
The climactic track of Rainbow’s swords-and-sorcery metal masterpiece Rising (1976), Stargazer tells the tale of a sorcerer whose slaves build a tower so they can watch him fly from it —… | Continue reading
Yesterday we had an amazingly clear rainbow. And it happened at just the right time of day (4:20pm) that the sun was in just the right place that I was able to step back from the house and frame it… | Continue reading
I am writing a Jest/RTL test for a React component that invokes another component. I want to mock that second component so I can have it do things like invoking callbacks that the first component p… | Continue reading
[This is part two in a series — you should read part 1 first for context and then you might go on to part 3.] The Dublin Core — metadata made dumb Just when librarians were in despair o… | Continue reading
SITH DICRIPTION I, Darth trilon am a Sith. A Sith is a Jedi who has found the true sorce to powor. A siths primary hand weapen is a Light Saber like a Jedi. Unlike a Jedi we are evil. A Jedi Trusts… | Continue reading
Fiona and I both love the sunshine, and it’s something you don’t necessarily get a lot of in Britain. We’ve often thought that if we had the money we’d love to add a conserv… | Continue reading
An interesting thing happened. A few days ago, I made pizza dough for four pizzas, as usual. Generally, I do one each for Fiona, Jonno and me, and put the spare ball in an airtight plastic tub in t… | Continue reading
Emma — Jane Austen I usually think of this as my second favourite Austen (after Pride and Prejudice, naturally), but on my re-read of all six, I found to my surprise that I didn’t enjoy… | Continue reading
Have I got good news for you! First: the following albums, released in 1983, are as close to WWII as to the present day: Billy Joel: An Innocent ManPolice: SynchronicityMarillion: Script for a Jest… | Continue reading
Three years ago, I posted about an early 1990s heavy metal band, Metal Jester, whose singer Richard Whitbread had also been our singer in Anne Heap of Frogs. Since then, I’ve heard from Simon… | Continue reading
Rather belatedly … Here is a YouTube playlist of my now-traditional top-ten list of the albums I’ve listened to the most in the previous calendar year. (See this list of previous entries.) I … | Continue reading
However much I might lament the inexorable downward trend of everything that was once bright and good about my country, I was born an Englisshman and am still one today — which means I drink a lot … | Continue reading
If I Never Met You — Mhairi McFarlane This is is my fourth McFarlane book. (Previously: You Had Me At Hello, It’s Not Me, It’s You, Here’s Looking at You). She continues to impress and deligh… | Continue reading
It wasn’t until my 2007 trip to Oklahoma that I realised the food called “barbecue” in the USA bears no relation to the charred-on-the-outside, raw-on-the-inside sausages that bea… | Continue reading
On Monday last week, I made pizza from scratch for the whole family: but because it’s hard to separate a mass of dough out into five equal parts, I made enough for six pizzas, and saved the l… | Continue reading
Let’s see what G. K. Chesterton has to say about Boris Johnson and the rest of our clownish government. I read yesterday a sentence which should be written in letters of gold and adamant; it … | Continue reading
Today I read — a little behind the curve — that Richard Sharp, who the Tory government recently appointed as BBC chairman — has donated £416,189 to the Tory party since the turn of the millennium. … | Continue reading
Well, I blinked, and the best part of two years passed since the fourth and penultimate part in my series about The Incredible Hulk. (See also part 1, part 2 and part 3). For this concluding post I… | Continue reading
Back on 12 December last year, we had a spectacular rainbow out behind the house — so clear it felt you could reach out and touch it. Here’s a photo of it that I took on my phone, completely … | Continue reading
“Lockdowns don’t work!” Sorry, reality disagrees. This graph shows Covid-19 infection rates from the Government’s data as of today. I have superimposed pink boxes showing th… | Continue reading
As the final, definitive break the the European Union approaches — the transition period that has shielded us from most of the implications of Brexit ends in 16 days — we’re starting to see h… | Continue reading
I recorded this song for a Christmas event at my church. It was written by Graham Kendrick, who is best known for congegational worship songs of 1980s that have not necessarily aged very well; but … | Continue reading
Northanger Abbey — Jane Austen I’m making my way once more through all six of Austen’s completed novels, and was interested to see how this one would hold up. Although published p… | Continue reading
In the last few weeks I’ve had a horrible and debilitating attack of arthritis, so extreme that for several days I was physically unable to leave my bedroom. It also fogged my brain so I was … | Continue reading
I recently learned that Pink Floyd played a gig in my home town, a little under a year before I was born (on 12th March 1968): It’s a strange thought. I am 52 years old. Pink Floyd are even o… | Continue reading
We live in a content-saturated world. It took me a long while to get used to the idea that books are now easy enough to source that I can start one, decide I don’t like it, and just give up. … | Continue reading
A while back, I signed a government petition, “Review the need for a statutory owners and Directors Test in Football”. As a result, I got an email today: The Petitions Committee would l… | Continue reading
Monday’s little diatribe on git seemed to stir up quite a bit of strong opinion, both agreeing with me and disagreeing. As is often the case, they two camps seem to be split about 50-50, whi… | Continue reading
I don’t honestly even like moussaka much. By my wife loves it (and aubergines more generally), so a while back (pre-lockdown) she ordered it in a supposed Greek restaurant, only to find that … | Continue reading
Tremendous Trifles — G. K. Chesterton One of the better ways to approach Chesterton is through a collection like this one, consisting of 30 or 40 or so short, self-contained pieces in which h… | Continue reading
These are very much better than anything you get in a shop. They are really simple to make. Here’s how. | Continue reading
I didn’t think to get a photo before I’d eaten a good chunk of it: But here is last night’s pizza — one of three that I made. Fiona’s was topped with olives and anchov… | Continue reading
Thanks to a tweet (in Spanish!) from Zona Fi, I have learned of not one but two series of adventure games being written in my toolkits for building Scott Adams-format adventure games! The first is … | Continue reading
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