caffeineated

Dinner tonight consisted of home cured bacon on fresh baked, still warm bread. It was delicious. This was prompted by the last batch of supermarket bacon I had, which released so much water it shrank to about half it's original size and pretty much boiled instead of fried.

It turns out that curing bacon is a pretty simple process, and doesn't take long either. I used the process outlined for wet curing here. It basically entails sticking a piece of pork belly in brine for 24 hours in the 'fridge, then rinsing it off and letting it dry somewhere cool for another day. The results are pretty good, it certainly tastes like bacon and there was no water in the pan.

That purring sound you hear is me being decidedly self contented. I suspect breakfast tomorrow will consist of much the same, with some fresh ground coffee.

I've ended up with about 2lb of streaky bacon for a total cost of around £4.00. This compares favourably with the supermarket, where it would have cost around 25% more, and been 13% water.

The economy is in the mire, politicians of all stripes have been dabbling in the morally dubious, the government is tearing itself apart rather than governing, a millitant union is doing it's best to disrupt normal life in London, the BNP managed to get two MEPs elected. In amongst all this doom and gloom a couple of smaller stories hold out hope of a better future:

- Comedy Central have commissioned more episodes of Futurama.
I'd say 'good news everybody!' but that's been done to death already. It'll be good to see the crew of Planet Express back though. I just hope they manage to maintain the feeling of the first couple of series.

- The new Linux kernel's got some interesting developments in filesystems.
OK, so this one's probably a touch niche, but it's got me excited. NILFS2 looks interesting.

- 2510 Smurfs gathered in Swansea
Perhaps not good news, but at least it brings some levity to the headlines. Apparently they were all checked 'to make sure no natural skin was showing'. What a job! 'What did you do at the office today?' 'Oh, I checked two and a half thousand people to make sure they were painted an even shade of blue.'

- I have a fresh loaf of bread cooling on a rack.
It smells great, and now I'm off to eat a chunk of it with cheese.

26/02/2004 - 13/05/2009

It served well, and did what was needed. Now it's retired.

...Everyone will be compelled to sleep until midday on Mondays. That way Monday morning will not happen. This will be a good thing.

Some people, some sheep, some sheep dogs and a lot of lights:

I found this display in a local shop:




I can't decide if this is brilliant, or just plain crazy. These are all tins of sweetcorn. But not just any sweetcorn. Oh no. We have (from a single manufacturer, no less):

• Naturally Sweet - No added salt or sugar


• Original SweetNiblets - Tender and crisp


• Sweet Corn with Peppers - Tender pepper pieces


• Salad Crisp - Extra crisp


• Niblets Original - Tender and crisp


• Salad Crisp - Sweet and tender Sweetcorn for salads

This raises many questions; what is the difference between SweetNiblets and Niblets Original?What, in fact, are Niblets? What's the difference between the yellow and green Salad Crisp varieties? What is the distinction between "Sweetcorn" and "Sweet Corn"? But perhaps most importantly, why, for the love of all that is yellow and tasty, did they feel the need for so many varieties?

I think I may have fallen down a rabbit hole at some point...

Well, I managed to get the bronze medal for gents recurve, which was rather unexpected, and as a team we too gold, so I ended the day with two new medals. I've had a lousy year or so of shooting, so hopefully this marks the end of the doldrums and a bit of a return to form.

The sun was shining, it was warm, there was barely a breeze, the birds were singing (including a Kestrel by the sound according to one more educated in these things than I), and I spend the day shooting with friends. Now I have a cup of freshly brewed coffee to wake me up and the prospect of the County of London Indoor Archery Tournament tomorrow. Our club's running it, so I don't have far to go, and whilst I don't much rate my chances of any silverware I can hope to make the club team and one of the kids I've been coaching has a very good chance of taking gold in his category. In fact I suspect he might leave most of the seniors behind too.

All in all it's been a great start to the weekend.

# date +%s
1234567890

Happy 1234567890 day to all! At 23:31:30 tonight the unix time-since-epoch clock hit 1234567890 (seconds since 00:00:00 UTC January 1, 1970).

I remember a bunch of us celebrating 12:34:56 on the 7th of August '90, well at least letting out a brief hurrah and then getting back to what we were doing, so this has a pleasing symmetry.

An Australian chap at the office was discussing getting a new car:

"I need a car with a big donk up front and plenty of grunt. It needs poke too, but mainly grunt."

Now, whilst I understand each word in that sentence, and can gain some inkling of the overall meaning, I am still in the dark as to the precise meaning of the statement. Aren't languages wonderful things?

On my way home this evening I chanced to look out at the view from the station bridge, and it struck me just what a remarkable sight it was. I live in the east of city, and the station provides a view back over the core of metropolis. To the right stands the square mile, the ancient, looming heart of the city. The buildings have something of and aged grandeur to them, with the imprint of hundreds or even thousands of years of occupation in their layout. The winding lanes and alleyways that run through them like a tangled web hark back to the days long before cars and lorries, when transport would have been by foot or horse. For the city to still reflect that shows something of the tenacity of our history, and, I think something of our deep seated need to feel our history around us. the city has changed immensely, with glass and metal replacing wood and plaster, but somehow a little of it's antiquity still seems to show through.

To the left lies the docklands, risen from the ashes and desolation of the docks and warehouses laid waste in the second world war, to become the second heart of this city, beating to a faster and more energetic beat. Hear there is little of the ancient; all is modern, a bold statement of lofty towers in glass and gleaming metal, shining against the sun and reflecting in it's sharp unyielding edges the modern reality of commerce in this digital age. Where once stood the the bond warehouses, dockyards and wharves that were key to London's past fortune and growth now stand these great edifices to London's new trade in finance and information. The inexorable march of progress sees the old replaced by the new, and yet still somehow, there is a feeling of industry and intercourse with exotic places here. It is hard to fathom, but where once great sailing ships plied their trade to far flung ports around the world, now the bits and bytes that make up our ever more frantic communications fly hither and yon to those same destinations, and other even more distant.

When you stop to look at this city, it is a most remarkable sight. The ancient, grand heart beating to one side, the new gleaming heart to the other, and in between, what makes up the rest of London, the low, busy, unique, sometimes almost tribal, areas where most of us live, work and hopefully play too.

Over all this lies a glorious sunset, bathing the whole scene in hues of pink and orange, and for a few moments the city is ablaze once again, as it has been so many times in it's turbulent past. It seems almost as though Nature is reminding us that no matter how grand our designs, how bold our buildings, or how ancient, ultimately we are all at her mercy. The city lies not far above sea level, with the Thames snaking through the center. It would not take a great rise in water level to inundate huge swathes of land and put a rather more final end to city. Still, so far it's survived everything man and nature can throw at it. In some small way I hope it continues to do so. Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like living here, but, for now, the city has me hostage, and maybe a it is something like Stockholm syndrome that lets me think fondly of it now and again.

And with that, my muse departs me. I wish she'd visit more often.

It's hot and sticky, I'm knackered (a day's archery will do that to you) and I'm being driven crazy by a small child, somewhere near by, screaming constantly.

If you need me I'll be in the insane asylum, I hear they have air con.

This week, what I can only assume was Martian Death 'Flu or a variant thereof, tried to claim me. I valiantly fought it off, mainly by staying in bed and drinking Bailey's. I'm now convinced that this wondrous tonic can cure most any ailment except, maybe, lactose intolerance or alcohol poisoning.

In other, rather more pleasant news, I got engaged last week. I'd have posted about it before now, but I was in the States at the time, and succumbed to aforementioned illness.

I should go to bed now as I'm not sure I'm even making as much sense as usual.

You know you've been working too long when your neighbours express surprise that you still live in the area. I'm also blaming this for the lack of posts here. I really should try to post more.

At some point I'm going to get a chance to actually relax and unwind a bit. Of course I'll probably get restless and make myself busy again, but it's a nice thought.

Last weekend Erin and I went to Paris for three days. I say Paris, but I suspect the bit both of us were looking forward to most was Disneyland. Of course this entailed getting up at 4:30 in the morning to catch the 6:30 Eurostar. I don't do mornings well.

Paris was a really interesting experience, it seems to range from places like the Louvre to which adjectives like breathtaking, astounding and over-whelming apply (at least to the building) to places like the train stations and slums which seem to exude a feeling of shabby dilapidation.

Disneyland was good fun, and Erin managed to persuade me to try the roller coasters, which was impressive, since the last one I tried was the Wild Mouse on Hayling Island which left me hating them. It turns out I quite like the new generation.

I think I've just about recovered from all that, but next week we're both off to America for a couple of weeks with her parents, including a week long road trip taking in places like Las Vegas, Death Valley, and Disneyland California. Are you seeing the theme here?

I finally gave in and got myself a miniature helicopter. The name is a touch silly, but it flies remarkably well for something that sits in the palm of your hand. There's also a surprisingly large community of tinkerers on the web who make all sorts of modifications to them. I've spent several pleasant evenings annoying Erin with it so far. :)

*Dust's off mysterious object* Good grief, it's still here! My old LJ! Must post more.

What a beautiful day it's turning out to be. The sky's blue, sun's shining, it's warm but not unpleasantly so and there's a cool breeze wafting through. The plants think so too, and are frantically copulating in an attempt to make me sneeze, but I can overlook that today. I was surrounded by school children on my journey in this morning, but they were just a bit cheeky, rather than the usual loud and annoying. I brewed the coffee to just the right strength this morning, and now I've got a large, tasty jacket potato for lunch. I've got three monitors on my desk, two of them 24 inch, and they're all connected to machines that are humming along nicely, and for once I've actually got bucket loads of spare server capacity! To top it all off Erin arrives next week. Life is good.

To anyone having a less that wonderful time, I'd love to share some of this with you, there's plenty to go round. :)

In the process of commissioning some new workstations a co-worker of mine, who really should know better, required a network hub. Rather than ask for one he went into the (my) server room and took a spare along with a power supply. Not the right power supply, just a power supply. Needless to say feeding 24 volts to a device needing 7.5 led to the magic smoke escaping.

This is why I want land mines and a sentry gun outside the server room door. Will they let me have them? Nooooooo, it's a hazard they say. I say so are muppets!

So far today we've had (roughly in order): chilly winds, blazing sunshine, hail, more sunshine, snow, winds, more snow, overcast, rain, sleet and now more rain, and it's just gone three in the afternoon.

It's no wonder the English are renowned for talking about the weather, we have so much of it.

With the tube playing silly games earlier in the week I had to walk in from a different direction, a had the pleasure of finding a shop with this sign in the window:



I don't know about you, but I find that... disturbing.