(More clearing of links.) I spent some time writing in the sciences and APA (American Psychological Association) is a frequently asked for standard. I’m not a big fan of it personally, but here are some style guides and help on implementing it if the need ever arises:
This is an oldie from 1999, but I’m clearing my many many links, and it’s an interesting piece of research. So it’s not only men who “naturally” stray in the cause for better genes:
Women are attracted to more masculine-looking men at the most fertile time of their menstrual cycle, psychologists have shown.
During the less fertile times, they choose men with more feminine-looking faces. These are seen as kinder and more co-operative, but less strong and healthy genetically.
A controversial implication of the new research is that, in evolutionary terms, it is natural for a woman to be unfaithful in order to secure both the best genes and the best carer for her children.
Ah, more geekiness… as if I don’t have a desk/office/house to clean, work to do, Warcrafting to play etc etc…
This is quite old, I gather, but I only saw it today. You do need to have read/seen/give two figs about the Lord of Rings to appreciate its funniness though. Windows and LOTR, together at last:
DAY ONE
Am bored. No cable in Isengard. Nothing to do but write rude anonymous letters to Radagast the Brown and Manfred the Slightly Ecru. Perhaps will have a look at the palantir.
DAY TWO
Have met v. nice guy via palantir. He seems to really like me for me and not just because am most powerful wizard in Middle Earth. Wonder what he looks like.
DAY THREE
Am becoming disenchanted with palantir guy. Refuses to send me photo, except of one v. large eyeball. Says he is shy but I rather suspect he is fat, or perhaps hairy. Have heard some v. bad stories about palantir relationships. Should probably cool it for a while.
Studio Daily has links to a couple of wonderful Flash animations in an interview with Darren Price from Nexus Productions (you have to scroll down the article to get the video links – sorry won’t let me legally embed!). First there is Potapych: The Bear Who Loved Vodka which is a beautifully animated and quite sad little story about a drunk who adopts a bear and teaches him how to drink. Apparently based on a true story.
And Hare in the Gate, an amazing piece of animation featuring a hare/rabbit who travels through a myriad of cinematic genres and iconic scenes. It was for a Motorola ad and is somewhat mindblowingly wonderful. Unfortunately, I don’t think the ad made it downunder.
More biblical jollity, Brendan Powell Smith put out a series of scenes from the Old and New Testaments rendered in lovable Lego. These small hard cover books have made their way into many a Christmas stocking since they were released, but they are also available freely from the creator’s website: The Brick Testament. They are very silly and very funny. Note the frequent use of Stars Wars Lego figures.
According to the ads at YouTube, you can now “record from your webcam directly to YouTube! No upload needed!”. Yay! That’s all we need, YouTube making it even easier for people to upload their crappy webcam videos.
This, on the other hand, is a quality video. Don’t know what reminded me of it. The title is a mashup of one of my favourite trashy films, 10 Things I Hate About You (which itself was a retelling of Kiss Me Kate/The Taming of the Shrew) and one of those family Easter Biblical Epic standbys The Ten Commandments (was I the only one who felt sorry for the Pharaoh? Oppressive dictators can have their soft side too…). Anyway, it is a hilarious “comedy 3,000 years in the making…”
I’m doing a week of Latin summer school this week and it’s great fun. I’m totally rusty and can barely string the most basic sentence together, but it’s really wonderful how (some) things are coming back. The class is very relaxed so I’m just listening and learning, peeping up now and then when I actually know something.
I doubt I’ll ever be extremely skilled at it, no long-term patience. I also have a tendency to forget things way too quickly which makes it all quadruply hard if I take a break from it. I’m hoping that I will keep it up after this week is over though. It’s really fun, translating sentences, they’re like little puzzles. I imagine it’d be like Sudoku or acrostics if I were into them.
One of the best things about the summer school is the extra stuff organised. Yesterday, I went to a lecture on Roman values and today, I did a class on scansion which was brilliant. Hopefully, I’ll get round to writing up some of my notes. The scansion class also kindled a bit of a desire to get back to English poetry again. So much stuff to learn (and relearn, damn my terrible memory!), so little time.
This story is a lot nicer, though the child is considerably younger. A friend’s young nephew went to see Walking with the Dinosaurs on the weekend. He was eating onion rings, but didn’t finish them. When asked why not, he said he was keeping them to feed the dinosaurs. Later he got upset when the dinosaurs went away in the break and asked his mother where they had gone. She replied to the bathroom. He believed her. Apparently the dinosaurs were very impressive.
Another Tuesday, another cake. This time we had leftover plums, I bought a little bucket’s worth at the markets and after eating several plums a day for a week, I still had a small bowl of them. They were just a little too ripe for me so, given that it was that day of the week and a cake was due, I thought I’d kill two birds with some plums.
I googled “Plum Cake” and found a number of recipes: a Lorraine Plum Cake, a German Plum Cake and a Pflaumen Kuchen (German Blue Plum Cake), but I settled on another German style plum cake recipe from the Age, sweetly named “Mieze’s plum cake”. Here’s the recipe with my changes
180g softened butter 150g caster sugar [again I used the raw caster sugar 135g plain flour 135g self-raising flour pinch of salt 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 70ml milk 1/2 cup ground almonds (or fresh breadcrumbs) [I used ground almonds] 10-12 ripe blood plums, halved and stoned [I only had about 6 or 7 left but it was plenty]
Topping: 60g butter 1/2 cup castor sugar 2 tsp ground cinnamon 2 large eggs, whisked well
Preheat oven to 200C and lightly grease a 26cm spring-form tin.
Prepare the topping: melt butter and stir in sugar and cinnamon, when cool stir in whisked eggs.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in flours and salt. Separately, mix eggs with milk, then add this to the butter/flour mixture and mix well. Spoon into your tin where it should be no more than 1/4-/13 the depth as it rises quite a bit. Smooth the top and evenly sprinkle over the ground almonds.
Cover the mix with the plums (cut-side up). Spoon topping over and around plums on the cake. Place cake in oven and reduce the temperature to 180C.
Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a fine skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. [I ended up having to cook it for 1 hour 15 minutes because I used a narrower and deeper dish].
It’s still cooling so it will probably be my breakfast. The instructions say to serve warm with cream or ice-cream, but I think it will be just fine at room temperature too.
