It Burns!

Tonight is burns night. This, in case you are unsure, is the annual celebration of the Rabbie "The Baird" Burns and his works. The traditional food to be eaten on this occasion is haggis, neeps and tatties. Unfortunately I'm not much of a fan of my adopted nation's national dish. Happily, there's a vegetarian alternative available and it's damn tasty.

Previous years have involved me working at The Edinburgh University Jewish Society's annual Rabbi Burns Ball* and getting together with groups of friends of various sizes. This year was just a quiet one in the flat with my good lady, however. We did make the food a little fancy, however:



Picture stolen from previously mentioned good lady's blog.

Now if you'll excuse me I've just remembered that I'm also supposed to have a whisky.

* Boom boom!

Serendipitous Nostalgia

Today I was walking home from work and absent-mindedly listening to music, when I noticed that that my supposedly shuffled iPod was displaying a definite preference for one band in particular. A band I haven't really spared a seconds thought in some years. As I walked I hatched a plot a write a blog post regarding the nostalgia this inspired. So I arrived home and thought to have a look on youTube for some reference material to post...

There is a reason I have a marked preference for the combination of a heavy rock music and female vocals, and her name is Aimee Echo. In the late nineties she fronted a band called Human Waste Project with vocals which managed to be both sugary sweet and ragged at the same time. My youthful self took notice. My youthful self also attended a festival called the "Ozzfest" with his friend Rich and said friend's father, where he found Human Waste Project to be a late addition to the bill. My youthful self promptly had the back of head damn near blown off by one of the best live shows he had (or was ever to) see.

As it turned out, that was to be their second to last show. Aimee Echo left the band, who sounded like this:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xGLglF2MuEo]

and formed a new one, called at first Hero and then theSTART, who sounded more like this:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Um_2FSjXEtk&feature=related]

Though I like this second song, I find that the raw edge is missing from her voice. This is probably due to the more electronic sound of the new band and thus the requisite multi-tracking of a voice I don't feel requires it. The point is I don't like the second band as much, not least because this is the only song of there's I found which has much of a chorus.

So where was I... ah yes, I was searching youTube for content to post. What I found was a lot of presumably live videos. I saw one for "Dog", thought "sweet!" and clicked. The video loaded. Aimee Echo was talking into the mike. "So a long time ago... there was a band in the nineties... called Human Waste Project... and we are them..."

Hang on... this is a new video... and then the opening riff gave me goose bumps...

I'm aware the sound quality is awful on the video, but here it is:

HERE

A bit of frantic web searching promptly revealed that yes, gloriously, the band were back to together. At least to some extent. They'd played two shows in 2008 (well... more like one and a half, since the first one was actually the encore from a theSTART show) and were rehearsing for a reunion tour.

It's when things like this come together that I'm given to smile inwardly and think that perhaps there is someone "up there" who likes me.

For what it's worth, another lady who had an (arguably stronger) effect on my musical taste is Sandra Nasic. So, for the sake of completeness, here's a couple of videos of her singing with her (now defunct) band, "Guano Apes", and another of her providing guest vocals on an Apocalyptica song.

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ifASH53DNXQ]

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XvfYrKo1KGs&feature=related]

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wCeMJR33fkg&feature=related]

Apocalyptica, in case you were wondering, are a group of Finnish 'cello players, who once exclusively played Metalica covers, but now play original material. Here's another one, this time with Corey Taylor:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OCqUR_iActA]

I think that's enough music for now. Tootles.

Street Fighter Tutu

So I like computer games. This isn't news, really. Not in a hardcore live-to-game type way, more in a general fondness type way. That said, I did, as a youngster in an age before mobile phones, catch a bus to the next town so I could play a particular arcade game in what was (on reflection) a seriously dodgy little shop. That game was Street Fighter 2. It was a pretty great game, and it pretty much changed everything as far as the gaming industry was concerned. It spawned a bunch of sort of sequels which were mostly very popular, a couple of prequels, which were also very popular, and an actual sequel... which ditched most of the characters people loved and wasn't as popular.

Coming out a couple of months is Street Fighter 4, a sequel to Street Fighter 2, but a prequel to Street Fighter 3. More about that later, but to complicate things further, there's also a new version of Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, or as I'd like to call it: "Street Fighter 2: Really Fricking Pretty Edition". What it is is a revamped edition of the "original" Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo with redrawn graphics, new music and rebalanced game-play (all the characters are about equal now). So now (refering to the images below), instead of looking like the image on the left, the character Ken now looks like the image on the right.

Pretty cool, huh? What's really weird, though, is that they didn't change any of the game mechanics, so it still plays like it always did, thus:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WbYrxVDPBbM]

Which is a little jarring, but apparently necessary. Why? Because there are still large touraments with this game and some people actually count the frames in order to get their combos right. Weird.

But what of Street Fighter 4? Well it's still the same style of 2D fighting game, but it uses what I think is the most beautiful graphics engine I've ever seen:

This gives it a gorgeous cell shaded / traditional Japanese art type look which I really like. Also, even though the game-play is 2D, the engine is 3D; meaning it's not limited to pre-programmed graphics, and so Ryu can actually react to the fact that he's probably about to get dropped on his head, in real time. What's more, when you pull off a more spectacular move, the game can get a bit more cinematic on your ass:

Credit where credit's due: I stole all the images from wikipedia and Games Radar. Click any of them to jump to the relevant article.

It Kneads the Dough

Update: Used a link instead of an embedded video.

I like bread. I like it lot. So I was quite please when my parents gave me there bread machine and associated recipe book a couple of years ago. Their reasoning was (believe it or not) that I was the only one actually able to make bread with it. Their own attempts closely resembled articles suitable for construction, rather than ones suitable for mastication.

So I've used it on and off since then. Sometimes the bread was good (the sweet potato bread, for example, is awesome), sometimes it was bad (chick pea bread: no, no, no). Just lately I've been using it with renewed vigour, since I've resolved to avoid mass produced bread. Why (you might ask)? The short answer is that the methods used are damaging to the environment, in some respects the economy, and also to the digestive tract of the person who consumes it (which in my case would be me). The long answer is:

HERE

Out of curiosity I decided to have a crack at the San Francisco sour dough recipe in the book. This takes about a week to make in total, uses no yeast (none that you add, anyway), and only uses the machine for the kneading and some of the mixing.

On the whole I'm not that impressed with it. I don't actually know what sour dough is supposed to taste like (oops), but this one doesn't taste that great and didn't rise very well. That last one could be my fault, since I definitely messed up some of the timing.

Ahem.

Usually with a bread machine, the timing goes something like this:

1. Put ingredients in the machine and push go.


2. Wait a couple of hours (about four in the case of my machine, depending on the recipe).


3. Remove bread from machine.

That, you see, is the brilliance of it. It's very simple and requires a distinct lack of effort on your part (aside from a scrupulous accuracy in the measurements). With the sour dough it's more like this:

1. Mix some stuff in a bowl.


2. Wait three days.


3. Add some stuff to the bowl.


4. Wait two days.


5. Add some more stuff to the bowl.


6. Wait twelve hours.


7. Put the contents of the bowl and some other things in the machine and push go on the dough setting.


8. Wait the time it take to start mixing plus ten minutes.


9. Turn off the machine.


10. Wait eight hours.


11. Add some more stuff to the machine


12. Run an complete dough cycle (about two hours).


13. Take the dough out of the machine and knock it back.


14. Wait two hours.


15. Put it in the oven.


16. Wait twenty-five minutes.


17. Turn the oven down.


18. Wait ten minutes.


19. Remove bread from the oven.

Couple this small amount of added complexity with the fact that I discovered I was missing a key ingredient around step 11 (which due to the timing was at 6 am)*, what you end up with is a near complete loss of the simplicity, an inferior product, and a dirty flappy paddle bread tin thing which is even harder to wash than it would have been if you'd actually baked the bread in it.

The point, in case you were starting to doubt that I had one, is that from now on I shall only be making relatively simple breads in the machine (and they can bloody well cook in there, as well). For fancier, more exciting breads I think I may well tread the same path as Dougal (who pointed me in the direction of the above video), buy myself a copy of this and prepare to get my hands dirty.

* Erm... and fell asleep for an hour too long around step 14.

Rambo <= 15 Words

A simple and violent action film, but set against a complex, powerful and accurate background.

Objects of Desire

I haven't blogged in some, so it seemed only natural that I should do the churlish thing and write about items I would like, but do not have, post Christmas.

First of all is a pod based coffee maker. When walking through House of Fraiser pre Christmas my beautiful and wonderful girlfriend had cause to exclaim "These are so cool*!" What she was talking about was a Nespresso machine (or more precisely a table full of them). Basically you pop a little pod of coffee in the top, push a button and really quite good espresso (or something a lot like it) comes out of the spout. Boom. Simple and fast, without any fuss or the need to do much in the way of cleaning. This appeals to me. A lot.

There is of course a problem. The clue is in the name, and being the intelligent general reader you may have already spotted it. The whole shebang is made (or at least owned) by Nestle, who are are (by my own personal set of benchmarks) evil. Like, actually killing babies evil. They make all the coffee which can be used with the machines, meaning there is a limited selection, and have patented the design thoroughly enough that this will be the case for ever-more. So, refillable pods are not an option and the pre-filled ones are aluminium and only recycle-able in Switzerland. Unacceptable. Bugger.

So I did a bit of reading about the other pod based systems out there, and discounted almost all of them for one reason or another. It generally comes down to either evil companies or an unacceptable degree of waste. The one I didn't discount is the Senseo, which doesn't produce such good coffee (it has a 2 bar pump versus the nespresso's 19 bar), but you can buy refillable pods for it. Also, it's cheaper. A lot cheaper since Sainsbury has it on sale at half price. Problem solved. I'll probably pick one up tomorrow.

What I won't b picking up tomorrow is one of Sony's eBook readers. While I think they're completely awesome (eInk rules, I though it was actual paper when I first saw it and didn't even believe it was a screen until I saw it change) £350 is just too high an asking price. That's a lot of books. Check them out if you get the chance, though. One day, when its price goes down and mine goes up, I'll get myself one.

Lastly come the controversial one. Women carry bags. This is accepted. The size varies, though. I've seen at least one girl with a bag which, though clearly a handbag in terms of design, was about a metre long. Men on the other hand, are expected not to. If they do it is derisively referred to as a "Man Bag." Frankly, though, it's bloody useful. I tend to carry a messenger bag around a lot of the time as a result. It holds my tiny laptop, a notebook, some pens (duh), a reusable shopping bag and generally a book and some uni related things. The one I originally bought doesn't really measure up, though, in either form or function. What I'm looking for is something stylish on the outside, but nerd-tastically well organised on the inside. Stylish that is, again, by my own personal set of benchmarks. I kinda like this one: http://www.caselogic.com/15_4_canvas_messenger_bag/product_detail/index.cfm?modelid=113539 . Now, if I could only find somewhere that actually sells it...

 

* Even though she, in fact, does not drink coffee. No one, it seems, is perfect.