It's Hestontastic!

Strangely, I don't think my good lady actually thought I'd attempt to make any of the actual recipes when she bought me a copy of Heston Blumenthal's "Further Adventures in Search of Perfection" for Christmas last year. Sometimes I worry about how little she appears to know me. A chili con carne recipe which takes three days to prepare is exactly the sort of challenge I'm practically incapable of resisting. A black forest gateau that requires the use of a hoover? I say "bring it on!"

I do intend to have a crack at those ones, but I thought I'd ease my way in with the Bolognese recipe from "In Search of Perfection," which takes a mere ten hours to prepare and requires no special tools.

We invited round two friends whom we have cause to thank and don't see nearly enough of, and I gave it my best shot. Here's the maestro himself, explaining how it's done:







In the interests of honesty, here are the things I did differently:

• My good lady is allergic to celery, so I took it out;


• Every butcher I tried practically laughed in my face when I asked for minced ox tail, so I used good steak mince;


• I don't hold with serving a meat sauce with spaghetti, so I used pappardelle (thick ribbons);


• I also served it with some particularly good garlic bread of my own devising.

I should also point that the video is missing a couple of minor steps. If you want to actually make it, I recommend buying the book. If you have no desire to make it whatsoever, I recommend buying the book. Both books. They are fascinating reads. If you can't read, I recommend buying the book. It also has good pictures. I'm a little confused if that's the case, though.

At this point you're probably wondering if the sauce is good enough to warrant the expenditure of an entire day to make it? In short: yes. Abso-fucking-lutely. It was amazing. Will I make it again? Probably, though certainly not often. I might make it sometime when my good lady isn't in town and I can include the celery without the risk of her death (the sauce is not quite that good). Perhaps I'll even try begging and pleading with one of the local butchers to get some minced ox tail or a better substitute.

What I will definitely do is use some of the individual techniques. The tomato base may well become a sauce for meatballs, and the caramelized onions will almost certainly get used in a gravy or two.

Across the entire of both books are sixteen recipes. One down.

Musical Arithmetic

Okay, so here's the formula:

(A - B) + C = D

And here are the variables:

A =

Evanescence. More specifically: the original line up (as far as most of the world is concerned). I like Evanescence quite a bit, but that's about 74.2% Amy Lee's voice. The girl has one hell of a pair of lungs on her. I picked this particular song from the first album for reason which may become obvious later. For what it's worth, I think Everybody's Fool and Imaginary are a much better songs.

B =

Evanescence again? No. Well... yes, but the current line up. Specifically: Amy Lee herself. I picked this song from the second album (which is much better than the first) because it seems to have the most Amy Lee-ness in it. It doesn't have an actual video, though, so alternatively:

B =

I figure having a deficit of Seether won't affect the sum either way, so this works too.

C =

Former Irish American Idol contestant* Carly Smithson. Once again: A hell of a pair of lungs. Not an entirely dissimilar look, but quite a different vocal style, it would appear. Carly's voice has a bit more blues in it, a bit more sultriness.

D =

We are the Fallen, the new band from Ben Moody, two other former members of Evanescence and Carly Smithson. Can you seen why I picked that particular Evanescence song? That's more than a passing resemblance, style wise. There is a second reason I picked it, however. Carly has a less operatic voice, though, and a bit more range in terms of singing style. I love me some female fronted metal, so I'll be keeping an eye on this band.

Okay, here's another one which plays a bit better to her frankly spectacular voice:

D =

* That is: she's Irish and was a contestant on "American Idol." There is no such show as "Irish American Idol," so far as I'm aware.

Pirates of Silicon Valley <= 15 Words

This film is actually better than you'd expect, but the story needs more time.

Location Location Location

One of the few things I've missed since abandoning the good ship Windows PC for the Mac... er... Zeppelin (why not?) is magazines. I used to really enjoy reading the PC gaming and hardware mags. Oftentimes they were pitched at about the right level for me. I felt neither patronised nor confused. I'm afraid to say that this is not the case with Mac magazines. For the most part they tend to aim a little low, tech wise (no kidding, right?). I did also try Linux magazines, but generally found them to be way too dry and not especially well written. Once again, quelle surprise. Quelle surprise beaucoup.

So I was, as I'm sure you can imagine, quite overjoyed to discover Wired magazine. A platform agnostic tech magazine pitched about the right level (ish) for me, tech wise, whilst also having some focus on the business side of technology? Win! If you're not reading it already, I highly recommend it. So, when Wired decided to give the cover story to location based social networks, concentrating on Foursquare and Gowalla, I though "sure, what the hell?" and gave them both a go.

That was a good couple of weeks ago now, and I can categorically say that I'm not sure if I like them or not. Nor am I sure which of the two I prefer. The idea, basically, is that you periodically tell them where you are.

Where are you going? Wait, there's more.

It's a game of sorts, you see. Foursquare awards you points for visiting places (more if they're new places) while Gowalla gives you badges in your"passport." Both of them also award you bonuses for various things, and Foursquare declares you the "Mayor" of locations if you visit them more than anybody else. There is a bit more to it than this, of course, there's a social aspect, connected to both locating your friends and finding out where is currently "happening," (this is the correct term, yes?) but I think I've given you the gist.

On balance: foursquare seems to do more in terms of the whole "life as a game" idea, and makes it feel more worthwhile to visit places multiple times... but Gowalla has a MUCH better design, and the badges and pins (achievements) it gives you are much prettier, but lacks the competitiveness of Foursquare. I think, at this point, I would tentatively recommend both, but particularly Foursquare if you're a competitive sort. Either way, feel free to friend me if you do give them a try (it's free).