Month: May 2011

May 28, 2011
Had 4 of my board gaming buddies around today for an all day session of Android. It’s a wonderful but complex game, set in a “Blade Runner” type world. I was providing lunch, but I wanted something that I could prepare in advance, and require a minimum of attention while we were playing.

I read a nice recipe for loin of pork, where it is cooked on a bed of cooking apples, which go to make the sauce. I liked the sound of this, so I looked for a loin yesterday, but they were all quite small. In the end I bought one that might feed a family of 4, so I also bought a tenderloin, which was on offer.

May 26, 2011
A couple of months back, I made a post about Santander. This will hopefully be the last post I ever make about them.

A recap – having been a happy customer with National Girobank for most of my working life, when it got privatised and sold to Alliance & Leicester, I considered changing to another bank. However A&L didn’t actually change much about the account, and served it well, so I stayed.

May 23, 2011
May 21, 2011
About the same time that I bought my Kindle, I noticed the Wii Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock full band kit was being sold by Amazon for a ridulously low price of 60 quid. I ordered a copy, on the principle that even if I decided I didn’t want it, I would easily sell it on at a profit.

I did open it up, to check everything was there, but then it sat in its box for over a month, because I was too busy to do anything with it.

May 15, 2011
Yesterday was the first time I used my pellet grill to cater for my board-game group. It was the regular “Second Saturday” meet, and we had 11 people attend.

I had planned to do just bangers and burgers, the usual fare, but instead of grilling, I was going to slow cook them on “smoke” setting. This would be a bit different from what I had served before from my Weber kettle, and should also mean that when we broke for lunch, the food would all be ready.

May 11, 2011
Is anyone else (who reads this) playing with Arduino? It’s a kind of open source electronics kit.

I’ve just ordered the StartFun Inventor’s Kit to get me going, which is a heap of varied components together with an Arduino Uno controller – an easily programmable microcontroller. It looks a lot of fun, and it is possible to build quite a bit of stuff with a minimum of soldering, which suits me. It means I can play away developing my prototype, then call in a friend with a steadier hand when I have something worth building.

May 9, 2011
Upgrading to Firefox 4, I expected there to be a little pain, as I got used to any changes they made.

But whose bright idea was it to reverse the order of “Open in a new tab” and “Open in a new window” when you right click a link?

May 7, 2011
Over a year ago, I promised that I would write up some instructions on how to use a sourdough starter.

This was more difficult than I expected. It is one thing to know how to do something, it is quite another to explain it.

May 7, 2011
My first free weekend since I got back up on my feet again, and I had planned to use it to get the garden straight. And now it is raining, and looks to carry on like that for the rest of the day (and possibly the whole weekend).

I did manage to cut the grass, before the skies opened up, but that is a small part of what needs to be done.

May 5, 2011
May 5, 2011
I had a routine health checkup yesterday; more blood drawn to followup some previous tests, and general checking of blood pressure/weight and chat about diet.

The nurse asked me if anyone at the surgery had ever measured my height. I have been going there 10 years, but thought about it, and answered “no”. The nurse tutted, and muttered words to the effect of “of course, they find it easier just to ask you, don’t they”.

May 3, 2011