Yes, this is Monday. I was diverted on Friday doing things other than blogging. I like this video (Did you say blogging?), I can relate! There are people who say that you should only spend 15 mins on your posts but whole afternoons and mornings can be eaten up… There should be a health warning on blogging software… “may take over your life”.
Friends4Days is a sweet little site where you get matched with someone and you can converse for four days and then decide whether you want to keep them as a friend (presumably it has to be mutual) and then you get another friend in your inbox. I’m imagining that for the most part if the other party isn’t there for dodgy reasons, you’ll probably hang on to them as friends. Hope the right people and not spammers and network marketers get attracted to it.
SixApart makers of MovableType and LiveJournal have just released Vox, a social media sharing network (yspace/youtube/delicious), their big selling point is that they let everyone plug in to them so no barring of youtube videos a la myspace.
You might like make a video of yourself to send your new friend or stick on Vox, but Premiere is too expensive. Well there’s a whole heap of online video editors popping up that will do simple editing and let you use some cool effects. Most notable has been JumpCut because they recently got bought by Yahoo. But if there was an award for cutest logo, it has to be Eyespot, esp the one for sharing. Love it!
Checked out this site and I have no idea what they do because I couldn’t get past their tagline: “This Is Your Internet! Are you ready to take control?”TM
Well if it’s my internet, why are you asserting that it’s your trademark*? It’s some P2P thing which is “patent pending”**… groan…
*The “TM” just asserts it’s your trademark, where “R” in the little circle means some trademark registry somewhere has actually let it be registered. **Not a big fan of computer patents and even less so when it applies to just flow charts (business models).
Before the whitest guy on earth bore its tuneful way deep into my brain, there was Peter, Bjorn and John with their addictive Young Folks song. I’d managed to forget about it until that post but now I think of one and I immediately think of the other, so basically, the two songs have been on constant replay in my head for the good part of the past two weeks. Enough to drive me crazy, or move to Sweden. Instead, I’ll inflict them on you! (here’s a live in Glasgow version courtesy of youTube)
It’s a bit of a tradition in our household to make a cake on a tuesday (it is actually known as “cake tuesday”) and this week I tried an upside-down pear and almond cake and it was quite yummy. I got it from Seriously Simple: Easy Recipes for Creative Cooks by Diane Rossen Worthington. She suggests to do it in one cast iron deep pan but you can cook the pears separately and then add them to a flan or casserole dish later (I used a springform pan)
Ingredients: 1 cup almond meal 2/3 cup plain flour 2 tsp baking powder 6 tbsp (150g) unsalted butter (room temp) 1 cup caster sugar (I used 1/2 normal and 1/2 raw caster sugar bc that’s all I had) 2 large eggs 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). In one bowl, combine almonds, flour and baking powder – mix to combine and set aside. In another bowl, beat the butter until creamy and then beat in the sugar until the mixture is thick and pale. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until incorporated. Gradually beat in the flour mix and the orange juice until combined and set aside.
In a deep cast iron pan (or just a normal one), melt the butter and then add the sugar and allow to dissolve on a med-high heat. Add the pears and let them caramelise for about five minutes. Be careful not to overcook the sugar! Let it cool for at least five minutes.
If your pan is deep enough and oven proof, tip the cake mix straight over the pears, otherwise first transfer the pears to the baking dish and cover with the mix. (If you are using a springform pan, make sure you wrap the base and sides with aluminium foil because the toffee liquid will leak otherwise.) Transfer to the oven and let bake for 50-60minutes, when a skewer should come out clean. Let it cool for a further 10 minutes before tipping it out, pear side up, onto a plate.
*I accidentally put in a cup of orange juice somehow… It was fine, more of a pudding texture and moistness but yummy!
This company make custom made dolls based on a picture of a loved one: YouDolls.com – It’s All About You I won’t post a picture of the child they used because I think kids deserve some privacy even if their parents think otherwise, but she’s a pretty little thing, while her “likeness” below has to be the scariest dolls I’ve ever seen. Poor little doll, it’s like the frog prince thing that Bart created in the Harry Potter Halloween episode if I got it as a child, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep with it in my room.
The technology now exists for you to have your own face on characters that you play in games. I blogged about it briefly on Andrew’s blog. It’s a new frontier in technology, but also a new frontier in the effect on gamers’ psyches. It’s all a bit scary, but too cool. I hate that with technology, things you could only dream about are starting to become real possibilities and actualities which rocks but they also come with lots of new ethical dilemmas which really sucks. Ah the tradeoffs, I feel for those beetles.
You might have seen some pics/video of projection bombing recently, it’s where artistic types project images onto large structures and make kinda cool statements, here is a tutorial if you have always wanted to do your own: PROJECTION BOMBING
Outdoor digital projection in urban environments is a great method for getting your content up big before the eyes and in the minds of your fellow city inhabitants.
It’s almost time for Nanowrimo! The competition where you win if you managed to finish off a (50,000 word) novel in the month of November. They are now accepting registrations so if you’ve ever felt that you might have a novel inside of you, sign up and maybe find out! It may seem like a lot of words, but it’s only just over 3 pages/day. For a lot of people, just giving up evening telly would make enough time to do that. The idea anyway is to aim for volume not perfection. You can edit away much easier when you’ve actually got stuff to edit and writer’s block is safely dispensed with… and it will give you something to do over January and February!
Joining up with a friend is the best way of getting support, but there’s heaps to be had on the Nanowrimo forums and they even have a Radio show!
Simon Haynes, a science fiction writer, has developed a few tools including the free yWriter software which helps you break down your writing tasks into doable chunks. He’s also got some neat forms to help you keep to your Nanowrimo goals.
If you’re looking for help on your technique, check to see if you have a local community writing centre that runs courses or else try the online courses at Writers Village, they charge a subscription fee and then you can do as many or as little courses as you want. I’ve done some in the past, the variety is huge and they’re quite fun.
beetles with the biggest horns have the smallest testes, showing that in evolutionary terms you cannot have it all. [ABC Online]
Apparently according to earlier research by the scientists, the smaller horned (and sometimes hornless) males have much more powerful sperm and are much sneakier!
Instead, small, hornless males seem to invest their limited resources in longer sperm and disproportionately larger testes, compensating for their inability to guard a female by ejaculating more seminal fluid per copulation. In this way, small males may increase the odds of fertilizing an egg each time they manage to sneak past their larger competitors who mate more often but possibly with less efficiency. When unable to scuttle past their larger opponents, sneaker males may even dig side tunnels into a female’s chamber, where they are often detected by the resident guard and booted out. In the midst of all this rivalry, the female seems equally willing to mate with any male who manages to reach her, and it is likely that the competition continues within her, between the sperm of rival males. Thus the tradeoffs associated with horns may explain why males have evolved the two alternate mating strategies of guarding and sneaking. [Innovation - Princeton Journal of Science and Technology]
by Diane Rossen Worthington. She suggests to do it in one cast iron deep pan but you can cook the pears separately and then add them to a flan or casserole dish later (I used a springform pan)
