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Otakucookup – Green Thai Prawn Curry
In: diary
3 Mar 2010400g Prawns (larger and fresher the better, shelled)
1 can Coconut milk
2-3 tablespoons Thai Green Curry Paste
1 lime
1 lemon
1 tablespoon Thai Fish Sauce
Small handful of cashew nuts
6 chopped spring onions
1) Fry the prawns for a minute in a little oil.
2) Squeeze in the juice of the lemon and the lime, and add the fish sauce, simmer them for a couple of minutes.
3) Bung in the cashews and the spring onions, and if you need an extra hit of spice, a little chilli powder too.
4) Now add the curry paste (2 tablespoons for newbies, 3 or so for if you’re used to it), and stir it well into the ingredients whilst frying for a couple more minutes
5) Finally add the coconut milk. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, and testing for taste towards the end once it is thickening up nicely.
Serve with white boiled rice.
This post is part of the #otakucookup as suggested by Tim Maughan of Tim Maughan Books, providing a useful service to hungry otaku everywhere.
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- Tags: #otakucookup, #otakumanup, food, recipies
I dropped my iPhone on the floor this morning. It is fine, I’m typing on it now. What occurred to me though was how underworried I was that it would be okay. I have dropped it before, on harder surfaces, and it was fine. I’ve got insurance. And it is close to being due for an upgrade.
In conclusion, I think I may be ready for parenthood.
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- Tags: iphone, parenthood
Simon Cowell – Do More Evil
11 Feb 2010It’s always good to try and get yourself into someone else’s mindset. Try and see the world from their point of view. So today I was wondering What Would Simon Cowell Do? See, he took a little dent this Christmas, what with the Rage Against The Machine campaign. X-Factor stuff still earned him a pretty penny, but the public will have seen it as a small defeat for him, after so much success. Obviously next year, there will another attempt to do the same, it may even be a bigger defeat.
What to do? One could lick one’s wounds, take a pragmatic approach, be slightly more subtle. Just pick a better song than an insipid Christmas-ish one like they’ve done the last few years, that might work.
However I suggest a different approach. Balls out, pure unbridled evil, make a load of money, and essentially stick it in the face of the RATM protesters. Release every performance on X-Factor on iTunes the following day. I suspect it could potentially sell enough for him to have 12 consecutive number 1s, up to and including Christmas. He could take up all of the top ten in a week. I think it’s a horrific idea. However Cowell never went broke underestimating the desire of certain broad swathes of the public to buy any old tosh. Look at Robson and Jerome. They actually broke sales records.
Just imagine, rather than a world where RATM gets a surprise number 1, the British public has a load of half-arsed performances clogging up the charts for months. That would teach them.
Scalextric Obsession
In: diary
9 Feb 2010
I’m building a nice little obsession with Scalextric at the moment. Decided that I needed a set for my birthday last year, and have enjoyed that so far, but since the end of the last F1 season, I think I felt I was missing the racing, so to fill the void started building up my collection somewhat.
I’ve started making plans, scary plans, ones that might involve solder, painting and woodwork. All things I will confess are not high on my greatest talents list at the moment. I’ve looked into what other people have done, and there are some scary/brilliant tracks out there. I’m not intending to come close to that at all, but I will have a go at making something nice. Couple of thoughts at the moment, one is to build a NASCAR oval, the other is to make something with a few more turns. Something to be said for both ideas, but I think the best bet is to aim for something manageable.
I must go, I’ve got to check on the price of a sidecar on Ebay…
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- Tags: scalextric
Happy Birthday to Me
In: | diary
8 Feb 2010
38 years old today. Great weekend to celebrate it, wandered round the Steampunk exhibition in town, then a nice walk around Oxford, followed by a cracking meal at Shanghai 30s. Scalextric was my main pressie, a fitting addition to a growing collection for a man of my advanced age.
Not really pondered too much the passing of time, tend to do that at New Year. This was more just mellow progression, like a smooth chord change, rather than the bells and whistles the change of year brings. If I’m looking for one thing though, did get thinking about getting out on the bike again, both for traveling to work, and for some trips further afield to take photos out in the countryside. Sounds like a plan.
Recent Snow Picture
In: photos
10 Jan 2010
Adding to the flurry of pictures of the snow in the UK recently, here is what it looks like outside at the moment.
Spike Jonze Playlist
In: music
10 Jan 2010Have been doing a little collating on youtube, and now have a pretty decent collection there of Spike Jonze’s work:
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- Tags: commercials, film, music, playlist, spike jonze, video, youtube
And so that was Christmas
In: diary
29 Dec 2009Well, nearly done with the Christmas season now. Not back to work until the 4th, so taking it nice and easy. Managed to watch the first series of the Sopranos in just a tad over 24 hours, so that was something approaching an achievement. Have also done some tidying, sorting and organising, which also counts. And some home coding.
New Year is planned to be a quiet one, with a touch of champagne to celebrate the transition into dry January. Gym and no drinking is the plan. The first time I typed that previous sentence, I typed Gin and no drinking. My subconscious seems to be less keen than I thought.
Home Fabbers a step closer
In: comment
11 Nov 2009A recent tweet from Bruce Stirling pointed me in the direction of the kit for a new home fabber unit, the Cupcake CNC machine.
Makerbot Industries – Cupcake CNC from MakerBot Industries on Vimeo.
Fabbers (Fabrication Units) are essentially 3D printers, which can cut or form an object out of materials, normally plastic. In the case of the Cupcake CNC, it extrudes thin molten plastic precisely to form the object. There have been industrial versions for many years, but the idea of the home fabber is something I think I first heard mentioned about nine or ten years ago, quite possibly by Bruce Stirling.
This idea has interested me for some time. It’s the prospect of manufacturing in your own home, being able to download new designs for objects, make new ones yourself. Possibly being able to recycle plastics into new objects, making cups or plates when you need them, rather than having to buy them. It really is a device I can foresee being in most homes eventually. And devices like these are the transitional ones, just like the computer kits that Bill Gates and Clive Sinclair amongst many others sold in the 70s that quickly became the first commercial home computers, these are the first steps towards that idea becoming reality. I can’t wait!
Postscript:
It’s a little odd and great all at the same time that I can refer back to myself eight years in the past.
- Comments
- Tags: bruce stirling, fabber, printer
About this blog
flotsky is 38, and ambles through life at a gentle pace, surrounded by gadgets, books and televisions. Sloth is his vice, but it leads to some interesting distractions along the way. He is the world’s leading investigator into P.Wyndham Little, takes a great interest in the works of Kurt Vonnegut, and gets all excited about gaming.
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Why I won’t buy an iPad yet
In: comment| tech
10 Feb 2010Thought I’d ponder this a little while, give the product and the chatter a little chance to sink in. The iPad looks gorgeous. Pretty much a few weeks after I’d bought my iPhone, I knew I wanted the same thing, but somewhat bigger. I’m not a genius on this front, I know many people felt exactly the same. And now it exists, it looks right, and as one would expect from Apple, there are a few little twists that make it better than I imagined. Getting properly into the ebook reader market is one, an Amazon that works like the iPhone store is perfect. Price is another, if as it seems it comes in around the £400 mark, that’s a lot cheaper than I’d have guessed.
So why not buy one? Well, for me, the iPad is going to be a device I’d use sat in front of the TV. I’ve got an iMac for doing my own work, and for serious surfing. I’ve got a proper laptop for work. For the sofa surfing, I’ve got my trusty Acer Aspire One netbook. Now, the netbook isn’t the iPad, isn’t as lovely. But it does fulfill the same task very adequately, and I just don’t think I can justify it to myself on the basis of loveliness. If it breaks, and can’t be fixed, then I’ll happily buy it as a replacement, but there isn’t any other reason to get it yet. It doesn’t doing anything else over and above a netbook to me, so I’ll happily wait. By the time I need an iPad, it may be in a second generation. It may be cheaper. Most importantly of all, I’ll have the need for it.