buter's BABY blog

According to these people:

Snow is precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes. Since it is composed of small rough particles it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure.

According to me, however, snow is just white, cold stuff, that is excellent for skiing on, and is only one short sleep away from me :)

I'm looking forward to seeing the sun rise over the mountains. The high altitude makes everything doubly pretty (oh and the snow helps a bit too..!)

So anyway, as we will be in Queenstown either skiing or sleeping for the next 2 weeks there may be very little in the way of blog updates for that period.

Will you miss me?

FIVE FOUR SLEEPS TO GO ....

Being real busy at work right now because of my upcoming holiday I can't update this as much as I want. So I'll just keep the sleeps count up-to-date. You'll live.


Do you ever complain about not having the proper tools to do your job? Well pity the poor soldiers in Britain who have run out of blank ammo for training exercises. A little undignified for them, running around shouting "Bang!" and making that funny machine-gun sound "bdrdrdrdrdrdrdr...!!" (well , you try to type it!)

Anyway speaking of tools, I've been loathe to download and install iTunes 4.9 simply because my home puter is hardly ever connected to tha IntarWeb so there seemed little point to it - after all the major joy of iTunes 4.9 is the podcatching, right? So anyway tooling around on the internet a while ago I came across this little place called Odeo. They are offering a podcatcher and it's finally available in beta. Why Odeo over iTunes? Partly, the traditional geeky feeling of "you want to make me rely on your software, but I don't want to be forced into anything" and partly because they're new, small, and cute. Don't get me wrong, my puter is still hardly ever connected to the Net, but I like supporting the little guy. Sometimes they get big - look what happened to Google!! Other geeks agree with me, and publish specific ways to not use iTunes.

So today Odeo opened up for beta .. and I went to see what the fuss was about. First off, their front page is a whole lot friendlier ! No, really! I visited iTunes.com just to compare and it just doesn't make me want to explore further. Odeo reminds me of the HHGTTG - with large friendly writing on the cover, that kind of thing.

What's more they seem to (so far) emphasise independent podcasts over corporate ones. So the first place I visited was One Minute Vacations. This strikes me as an excellent project, kinda like PostSecret and Illustration Friday in that it's a community artistic effort. One Minute Vacations offers up to 60 seconds of recording (so each file is <2Mb, which is actually feasible on my dial-up connection) of some environment that is chosen to transport the listener out of their dreary existence for that short time. I like it!! So far I've only listened to the sound of a woman striking a bell and chanting in Japan, but it is sufficient. I'm hooked. I'll download their catcher tonight and hook my PC up to this podcatching net.

And who knows, maybe I'll record my own One Minute Vacation next week in Queenstown. Mmm, the shushing of skis ...

Did I mention yet that it's five four sleeps to go? <grin>

Last semester I did a subject called "Business Planning for Innovation". This was one of those things where you had to analyse an innovation the company was thinking of exploiting, and devise a business plan that should take it to market and make truckloads of cash. Somehow the marker understood what I wrote about .. after two assignments I was sitting on a mark of about 65% for the total course (and there was still 30% to come from the exam).

So then there was this exam. My exam story is kinda funny. When I was doing the sample paper it took me ages to finally work out what the first question was asking. But once I understood, it was ok, I just hoped the real exam would be the same type of question. So I got to the exam (interspersed with random trials and tribulations related to that travel agent) sat down, read the instructions: "1 1/2 hours, answer Question 1 and then answer one of the following three questions". So I got started ... 45 minutes per question, sounds pretty straightforward.

.... Eventually I seemed to realise what Question 1 had actually been about, and scribbled some sort of conclusion, looked at the clock - 1 hour had passed!! Oh no!! So flipped to the next question (luckily I'd already picked the one to do ..) scrawled some amazingly incoherent answer, looked at the clock again ... hmm, that was 10 minutes. Waaaaiiit... time dilation or what?? I still have 20 minutes!! So then I tried to fit in some padding and explanations and proof that I actually did know what I was talking about, into the incoherent mess that was Question 2. Re-read Question 1 ... why not add another conclusion, since the first one seemed a bit confused ... time's up!

My confusion was obviously not shared by the marker :

Woah. (Just in case you need to know, HD = High Distinction, as in, the highest grade they give)

So, one subject to go. Somehow I have to continue to confuse the markers that my incoherence is in fact cleverly disguised genius.

Think it'll work? It would take a miracle!

It's nearly home time and I'm watching some tests run on my 2nd monitor.

This leads me to a syllogism:

A. Running tests captures my mouse
B. If my mouse is captured I can only type in one other active window and can't change its focus
Therefore, C. I have a bit of time to update my blog before going home.

But, the blog entry will probably be strangely linkless (see point B) until I can get round to that tomorrow.

So anyway, I tooled around a little bit this afternoon with some funky-arse javascript to add a little dynamic countdown clock to the sidebar. See it? Innit cool? Anyways it's counting down the days and hours left before we go to Queenstown. I had to mess around in the code part of it first and then I actually read the javascript to work out how it worked, and .... well .. you know the rest.

I guess it's official.

I've become a bit of a geek.

But isn't the javascript cooOOOOooool ?!?!?!

And aren't you all just the teensiest bit jealous that I'm going skiing in (insert javascript here) 13 days and some hours?!!?

Hey another conclusion of the syllogism is that I'm just gonna keep typing here until the tests finish. Hehehe. Some truly random interior monologue is about to appear ... Oh wait, that's just normal.

Someone remarked to me once how strange it was that on the train all the commuters are essentially silent. People might cough, sniffle, turn pages in their newspapers, or maybe even you can hear music overflow from their crappy headphones (not from mine as they are excellent Sennheisers!!) ... and if someone actually has the audacity to hold a conversation, they kind of feel out of place. I mean, it's not as if it's a library, but that seems to be the general feeling. Or it could just be that we don't want to wake up the person snoring next to us ...

.. oop, tests over, and it's time to go home.

Links will appear later ... stay tuned!!

edit: links added, but they're pretty average - I guess it's a case of "you had to be there".

I was wondering if I should post something about the London bombings. It seems like it should be done. I got emails today from 2 of my high school friends who are actually in London and they and those they hold dear are all safe so that's a good thing.

But then I realised that, unlike this guy, I actually don't have any intelligent comment to offer. Not that the lack thereof has stopped me blogging before, but I'd rather not make a comment on something that is so important to so many people. I might be mistaken for trivialising something that is in the end, not so trivial.

Hiren probably summed it up as well as I could: "It seems like a vast majority of the people are a little miffed that the tube system has gone from bad to worse, and now they have someone they can really vent their anger at."

As I'm nowhere near Europe, let alone London I figure that's as good a summary as any. So my official blog on the matter is blank, containing not an electronic sausage.

So in other news, I'm a member of the Greater Union Cinebuzz Club. Amongst other things that I don't use, they promote a different $8 movie every week. So we went to see Mr and Mrs Smith last week and discovered 2 things :
- the $8 movie is more expensive than normal prices on tight-arse Tuesday
- tight-arse Tuesday in school holidays is packed!
Anyway I quite liked it, a bit of fun and some clever dialogue. In my opinion anyway. DTM said he spent the entire movie waiting for it to get started. I guess it's not on his top 10 flicks list.

Tonight we're going to see Batman Begins, coz guess what! It's this week's $8 movie!!

The only reason I'm obsessed with not paying full price for a movie is so I can fund my skiing habit. 2 weeks to go!!

hey cutes,
You haven't blogged about your iRiver yet!!

-------------------
Isn't he cute (part 2)

So, it seems that I take requests for blog entries :)

Yes, I got an iRiver H10 - it's fabbo. The story goes, that I was researching a new MP3 player for about a week. I checked out reviews from ZDNet, CNet, and PC World. I looked at prices at Tricky Dickie's, MP3Direct, and a couple other dodgy brothers online MP3 player stores as well as on eBay.

In the end I decided on the H10 :

• it has a replaceable battery
  
• the battery can be recharged from USB or via mains with the AC adapter supplied
  
• it has maybe 12 hours play time
  
• stores 5GB (I don't need 20GB+ and I already have a 128MB player - pshaw!)
  
• has a colour screen, jpg compatible for those times when you just want to see a photo ...
  
• no software required
  
• supports MP3, WMA
• and does voice recording just in case I want to have my own podcast.
  

So I told DTM about it, he checked the reviews on Amazon (just in case I had got it wrong) then went to JB Hi-Fi and they were selling it cheaper than anywhere else, and they had sold out, but he placed an order for me.

Then they got a shipment that afternoon!! And DTM picked it up, paid for it, and left it for me to find at home (he went away for the weekend and thought it would be a nice consolation prize). Hence, isn't he cute (part 2). Incidentally, JB Hi-Fi is now advertising the H10 on tv for a whole lot more than DTM paid for it. Timing is everything.

Anyway so since then I've been listening to a bunch of stuff. I tried a few podcasts, and so far I'm hooked on Dawn and Drew, Earthcore (the world's first podcast-only novel), and I also get some laughs from Slacker Astronomy. I tried a couple others, but nothing else really floats my boat so far. Oh and no, I'm not going to podcast just yet. I think writing this blog is just about the limit of my creativity, and definitely is the limit of what other people would find interesting about my thought processes ....

Anyway that'll do for now. A million links to follow.

If you would like to make a request for a future blog entry, send it to butercup at gmail dot com and maybe, just maybe, I'll pay attention to it.

I think I'm married to the cutest person in the world.

-----Original Message-----
From: DTM
Sent: Tuesday, 5 July 2005 2:46 PM
To: the other sexy ferret
Subject: hey


Before you get bitten on the arse by karma, you better chuck P of Kensington into your blog to make up for your travel.com.au rant. P of K's service is pretty amazing.

bodum dum

--

So the story goes, that on Friday we decided we needed a 12-cup coffee plunger. And I had just so happened to receive the Peters of Kensington e-newsletter with their latest specials, and Bodum was on sale. So we picked out the one we wanted, I ordered online, and put in my credit card details, and put in DTM's office for the delivery place. Their receipt said "you'll get the goodies in your hot little hands in 3-10 business days".

And lo and behold!!! 2, count them, 2 business days later it's arrived! How's that for service. Mmmm, coffee's on tonight :)

By the way, we have previously ordered an excellent Scanpan saute pan and a massive suitcase from P of K and every time we have been really happy with their service. They rock.

And why is he the cutest person in the world?

1. In the Muppets Christmas with John Denver Miss Piggy sings the line "5 goooolden rings, badum bum bum".
2. I referred to this in an email to DTM saying "we should buy a 12-cup bodum dum dum".
3. He emailed me as above inferring that the plunger had arrived by signing it "bodum dum".

That record is like 20 years old and we never listened to it together, but we both know it and quote it to each other.

Now that's cute.

Wow, we had a fabulous time over the weekend. Eating and drinking with friends is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a weekend.

So, the super six booked a cottage in the Hunter Valley - drove up on Friday night and stayed in the lovely Woodlane Cottages just outside Cessnock.

Vic's excellent lasagne started our consumption of goodies for the weekend.... the end of the night was signalled by finishing (and starting) a bottle of Verona 8 year old Tawny Port in combination with Michael's waffles with Old English Toffee syrup - yummmm.

We then had a relaxing (read: slightly hung-over) Saturday morning breakfast. By 12 we were on the road and visited several wineries ... Calais, Bimbadgen, Blueberry Hill, Audrey Wilkinson, and the cheese factory at McGuigan's. We stopped for devonshire teas at the Hunter Valley Village and also perused some of the local art galleries.

By that time it felt like dinner so we went back to the cottage and had risotto for dinner followed by Lyndon's butterscotch pudding. Mmmmmm yummm. Drank some of the wine we bought, as well as more port.

Sunday ... we were less hung over, but still quite relaxed, so we ended up on the road at 12 again - visited Binnorie Dairy (cheeses! yum!!), Mistletoe, the Small Winemakers Centre (to refill our decanters of Verona Port), Peppertree and Ernest Hill.

I think we visited more wineries but I can't recall them all. The bestest ones were definitely Calais, Audrey Wilkinson and Ernest Hill. We were treated really well there, the atmosphere at each place was lovely, and the wines were fabulous.

We did take photos, but I'm too apathetic to post them - maybe later.

Oh and - WELCOME to my newest readers, the rest of the super six - Vic, Michael, Bac and Nick. Have fun!!

Edit - DTM just sent me a pic of our only-slightly-hung-over breakfast on Saturday. Thanks to Bac and Nick for the excellent bacon-n-sausages-n-eggs-n-mushrooms-n-tomatoes. I buttered the toast.

A really yummy, easy pudding for surprising your friends on a weekend away.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

In a bowl, whisk together:

• 1 cup self raising flour
  
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
  
• pinch salt
  

Stir in and mix till smooth:

• 60g melted unsalted butter
  
• 1/2 cup milk
  

Put batter into a greased pudding bowl / casserole dish/ whatever.

On the stove, heat gently till smooth:

• 30 g unsalted butter
  
• 1 1/2 cups water
  
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
  

Once melted, heat till boiling and then pour over the top of the batter.

Bake the pudding for approx 40 minutes, until the puddingy bit is cooked. You want to have the sauce sort of runny, it's still ok if the sauce goes like jelly but it's definitely overcooked if the sauce turns into toffee.

Serve with ice cream. This quantity serves maybe 3 people, 4 if you're not greedy.
I doubled it when I used it at the super six weekend away.

Yeah I know what you're all thinking, that I made 998 of those and the other 2 were from my significant other.

But NO!!

I'm going to estimate (on a completely unfounded basis) that I made only 450 of those hits and the rest were from Michael (who is not my significant other) hitting the reload button 550 times.

Other famous 1000th hits ... can be found by searching google. Man some people write bunkum when they hit 1000. Not that I think I'm an exception.

Today's syllogism:
1. Tom Cruise is a nutjob.
2. Michael said, "Katie Holmes would never go out with a nutjob". (Of course he was trying to prove that point 1 is false)
3. Therefore Katie Holmes is not going out with Tom Cruise.

QED.