Rat dish
I applied for 1 job and 2 gigs today… The job is for temping with more localis(z)ation stuff with UK English for which I’m eminently qualified. The gigs are for web design stuff which I’m qualified for but competing with hundreds of other people locally and internationally in the middle of a deepening economic disaster. Fingers crossed one of them’ll bear fruit.
Also picked another radish from the garden and took some pix…
Righty, off to Starbucks for a coffee. I just received my latest $5 from filling in surveys on how much I hate US Cable TV at epoll.com …
Photos on flickr from yesterday’s refreshingly dog-less walk. Gorgeous Autumn weather we’re getting now…
Follow me…
One of the sessions I enjoyed at WordCamPDX last week was on “Tying your tubes” about funnelling all your internet activity into a “lifestream”, a list of your activity on various social sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Google Reader and the like. The main thrust of it was how to include it in the sidebar using a couple of plugins, but I reckon this blog has enough going on in the sidebar without any more clutter… so, if there’s nothing much to hold your interest on this page, try the brand new LifeStream link on the top right to see what I’ve been uploading/favouriting/sharing around the interwebs. There was all kinds of things to do with Twitter too, but I still can’t work up the energy to tweet regularly. It’s all I can be arsed to do to tell Facebook what my “status” is every few days.
Also, if you were thinking this blog is taking even longer to load these days, it might be because I added a weather widget to the left sidebar. So if you’re wondering how wet it is today in Portland, scroll down a bit and on your left you’ll wonder no more.
This morning we went to the Farmers Market on the PSU campus downtown. I think Mum and Dad were doing something similar in North Petherton. But I’ll bet there weren’t any monkey heads on sale there…
WTF
Does anyone know why Flickr has rolled out this page?
Anyone need a website?
Seriously, anyone need a poster, bespoke powerpoint presentation, a logo, translation…anything dammit… huge discounts for friends. Since the answer to that question seems to be no (at the moment), I’ll keep perfecting my house-husband skillz.
I noticed George has published a photo of the banner I made t’other day, in action at the SF blues festival: (I’ll just link to the picture cos the site’s not live yet I think)
Yesterday seemed as good a day as any to make some bread. Drsita was out earning a living, Atticus was uncommonly mopey (he’s not big on low pressure fronts). So I downloaded a recipe, printed it out, decided it was wrong and thought to myself, well I can make pizza dough, I reckon bread’s probably the same with more yeast. So I nipped to New Seasons round the corner and assembled the ingredients. Flour and yeast, and some ‘erbs from the garden. A bit of mixing, kneading, prodding and one minor burn later…
Behold: Basic Portland, Oregano Bread…
Needs more salt, but it’s alright. The last time I cooked bread was probably in Kingston St Mary Primary School circa 1982. Now there’s someone whose site needs a makeover… even if it’s just replacing the MS Comic Sans with a real font…
Chapala’s full to overbrimming
It’s great seeing the photos on Flickr of Lake Chapala. Ten years ago the worry was it was going to dry up completely, but after a couple of years’ record rain, it’s back to the highest levels I’ve ever seen. Combine that with high winds and it takes on a whole new aspect. One of my Flickr friends, FerdeSanta has published a series of photos and also posted this video to YouTube:
My kind of recipe
Unlucky in photo competitions, lucky in radishes
So Atticus didn’t win a prize on the LA Times contest… I don’t know what he’d have done with a Nikon D300 anyway. But the 170+ “Best” votes are reward enough, t’was a fun journey and thanks, once again, to everyone who voted 😀
Yesterday I went to WordCamp Portland and it was a very useful day out. Normally when I go to a conference it’s to see family and friends doing Sociology presentations, or further back, about the finer points of managing a non-profit organisation, but this one yesterday was all about WordPress and blogging and I’ll probably write a techy what-I-learnt-thing post over at the business end of agaveweb.com when I get a moment. It’s definitely spurred me on to developing a couple of free themes from scratch and releasing them into the wild. Maybe a plugin too. It was cheap, cheerful, informative & well-organised. I am proudly wearing my free T-Shirt today. More conferences should have kegs of beer available from lunch time onwards too. Talking of which, I learnt about a Portland institution called Beer and Blog with weekly Friday meetups in PDX, so I might investigate that too. (actual group photo)
Despite my disparaging remarks about my allotment a few posts back, I was thinning out the radishes today and pulled up what, to all intents and purposes, look like actual, edible, undamaged radishes. And they taste okay too. Most of them ain’t ready (ripe?- do radishes ripen?) yet but this bodes well… Have a photo:
Also last night we barbecued, then finished off the last season of The Wire.
Today: heading out of the city to see if the leaves are looking properly autumnal yet.
Easy Welsh Cakes Recipe
Mum’s been making Welsh cakes for various civic occasions and passed on the recipe to me….
You’ll need:
UK Ingredients
US version or what I actually managed to find
- Milk, Semi-skimmed
- 2 x eggs
- Raisins
- Sugar
- Marge
- Mixed spices
- Self-raising flour
- Milk, 2%
- A splash of whatever the merry hell ReddiEgg in a carton is.
- Raisins
- Sugar
- Canola 0g Transfat Harvest Margerine
- Cinnamon
- Self-Rising Flour
- Mix up flour and marge. Half a pound of marge to a pound of flour…
- Blend it.
- Mix in 4 Tablespoons of sugar.
- Add mixed spice, cinnamon.
- Beat the egg and milk & mix it into the flour/marge/sugar stuff.
- Add your raisins/ dried fruit.
- If it’s too wet still, add more flour.
- Roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick.Cut it with a shape cutter, or something round.
- Heat an ungreased, non-stick frying pan up to around 3 (out of 10 on the dial)
- Heat each side for about 3 minutes till golden brown…
- Test them on the dog.
- Wait 10 minutes. If the dog’s still okay. Try one yourself.
I’m wondering what’s going to be served up in the ads that accompany this post…
Uninspired… 10ish things I love beginning with P
I was looking around friends’ blogs for inspiration today (cos I promised to post more often even if I’ve nothing much to write about) and I remembered Flash had recently unearthed the Things you love beginning with… meme. Way back in 2006 I got W. This time (via Skype chat)…
[8:37:38 AM] Gwyn says: Oy, Flash! Give us a letter for that meme. You gave me a W last time and I need some inspiration. (thanks 🙂 )
[8:37:59 AM] Flash says: you want a different letter?
[8:38:05 AM] Gwyn says: yep
[8:38:11 AM] Flash says: *thinks*
[8:38:17 AM] Flash says: P
[8:38:20 AM] Gwyn says: yay!
[8:38:20 AM] Flash says: ok?
[8:38:21 AM] Gwyn says: thanks
[8:38:24 AM] Flash says: np!
10 things I love beginning with P:
Parents, Phoning home
If it weren’t for skype, cheap international phone calls and the internet I wouldn’t be living so far away from home. Hi Mum & Dad!
Photography (+Picasa)
Here’s one from the other day. It looks like an apple, but is actually an acorn.
Chose focal black and white in Picasa’s options menu, waved my magic mouse and uploaded it to Flickr.
Photography is one of the most rewarding hobbies I have, not just taking photos but admiring and being inspired by other people’s too. Also it brings you little moments to treasure like Atticus finally overtaking “Dead Horse” in the LA Times and being the 2nd Best Animal at time of writing… I promise I only voted once. The votes have nothing to do with the judges so here’s hoping he gets printed in the LA Times paper edition this Sunday…
Potatoes
I could live on these exclusively for months. Like I did through most of university. I reckon the antiscience hicks have it all wrong and that spuds, rather than bananas, are the real “Atheist’s nightmare“…
Planting stuff in the jardin.
I won’t call it growing veggies just yet. That would be premature. I enjoyed the actual planting, even if the resulting rows of slug-eaten greenery is not (and may never be) fit for human consumption. The herbs’re doing grand though and the dandelions are thriving.
Peep Show
The facebook group has it about right: “If you don’t like Peep Show, you’re probably not worth knowing.” Harsh, but fair.
Pratchett, Terry
and his lovely discworld series. I started reading them when I was 13 or so and have read them all in order ever since. They’re enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the minute round here as Powells Books has a fair few used copies on sale. I’m still patiently waiting for Making Money to come out in paperback Stateside.
Pasties & al Pastor, Tacos
I’m going to have to get back to Mexico soon if only to gorge on Tacos al Pastor again.
Pasties are also missed, though we had the Chilean version round a colleague of Sarita’s house the other day, empanadas. Lighter pastry, an olive, egg and raisins got added to the recipe when it travelled south. Wikipedia has some handy pasty facts… “It is said that a good pasty should be strong enough to endure being dropped down a mine shaft.”
PCs
Yeah, they crash occasionally. Yeah, some of my drivers stopped working with Vista. Yeah, Microsoft… But when PCs go wrong I can usually fix them, swapping out some part for another cheaply bought one, or messing with the registry. When your Mac goes wrong, it goes wrong. Usually in spectacular/ expensive fashion.
I got my first PC from Drsita’s dad, Martin when I started at UMass in August 2000. I’d probably still be trying to teach Spanish to spoilt teenagers now if it wasn’t for him.
Parks
Parks are good. They used to be for drinking cider and playing guitar in, now they’re for being dragged through by a 25lb + schipperke.
Pubs
Though it turns out it’s not the place, it’s the company. Still working on finding some Portland pub peeps.
Posters
I seem to be making lots of posters lately. Here’s today’s…
That feels like 10. Maybe more. If anyone would like a letter, comment away.
Thanks for wading through all that, though the biggest news of late is we’re well chuffed to be having some Mexican mates over in January.
AWOL
It’s been a busy week for me and Drsita, though I think S worked harder than I did. She’s had her usual lectures, meetings, office hours & job applications going on and also yesterday gave a 45 minute presentation on tequila and gender involving various Lucha Reyes clips.
And we’re glad it’s the weekend…
So last Friday I had an interview for a job as a UK English localisation tester and that came through. On Monday I was testing a training program about EU Competition laws and Thursday and Friday I was recording all instances of organization (rather than organisation) and suchlike in a proprietary course management system. A lot like Moodle but infinitely more expensive. There’ll be more on Monday then it may well dry up for a bit.
I’ve been making DVDs for Drs. Sudarat & Sita. Working on theming a Volusion e-commerce site (I’ll post the link when I finish) and a 12′ banner for a friend selling camping gear for festivals. Putting together the first non-WordPress site I’ve done in years (link soon “Marketing Gestalt”…) Updating nourishingnutrition.com , lorrainepursell.com , comfortmattressfurniture.com . Finalising pink-caterpillar.com. And all the while clicking over to the LA Times site (which appears to be down today) to see how Atticus is faring in the popularity contest. He needed 3 votes to overtake the picture of the dead horse last time I checked…and watching my adsense pennies pile up.
Here’s my logo for the camping thing…
Cusifer’s in the dog house after his behaviour over the last couple of days. First off, on Wednesday we barbecued some veggies and while I was sorting them out inside, he made off with two thirds of my baked potato with cheese that was sitting on our garden table. And was very reticent to give it back. I wrested it off him and he sulked for the best part of 3 hours. As punishment, rather than his usual treats I gave him slices of said potato for the next 48 hours (If my baked potato is all that you want, baked potato is all you shall have…) Which may well have been the trigger for finding he’d been unable to contain his bowels on Friday night and gave me a fine way to start Friday.
Changing the subject… I finally finished watching The Wire Season 4. I think it’s been noted before, but it’s the best damn drama available on the planet. I can’t stop thinking about Bubs. Bless him. After season 5 it’s going to be hard going back to normal telly. I’ve found there are presently 4 reasons to subscribe to basic cable. And 2 (possibly 3) of them are freely and legally available online. The Daily Show, Colbert Report, The Soup and America’s Funniest Videos. The first two package US news in a palatable form. The Soup reminds me why there’s no point in watching anything but the aforementioned 4 programmes. And America’s Funniest Videos is perfect for watching while eating. Zero plot, zero thought, and 100% people falling over/hurting themselves. The cream of a country of 300 million all with easy access to a camcorder.
Here’s a picture of the sculpture by the PGE stadium next to where I’m working…
I’ll try not to let a week go past again before the next post… Here endeth the stream of consciousness.
Still alive, just busy
First picture I ever uploaded to Flickr? It was this one 3 and half years ago.
Mexico’s having a national Flickr convention in Guadalajara tomorrow. Flickrites are flying/bussing in from all over and converging on GDL. All my mates’ll be meeting up, wandering round with cameras, meeting interesting people, sharing photo ideas, techniques, badges, possibly T-Shirts… and trying to sort out hugely complicated bar tabs. I wish them all the best. And am just a little jealous.
Google, you’re spoiling us
A whole new browser and Picasa 3.0 beta, all in the same week? Didn’t they just launch a spy satellite too?
People don’t come here for tech reviews, so suffice to say Chrome is fast and well worth installing. Picasa continues to be a delight. I’ve got it tied up making a video slideshow with music and automatically uploading it to YouTube, but apparently there’s all kinds of other stuff too. Collages, proper image editing (removing blemishes), erm, slideshows again. I’ll edit this and post the youtube thing in here in a minute.
What else? Well, ever been in a cybercafe, desperately wanted to see pictures of Atticus and find out what I had for breakfast, but then forgotten what the address was of this site? something to do with tequila, spiders and logs? well, now gwynf.com will get you here in half the time. I found a coupon for godaddy (TEST99 if you want to try it), $1.19 for a domain for a year and it had to be used up soon, so there you go.
[flickr]photo:2834539328[/flickr]
Above collage made stupidly easily with Picasa 3…
VOTE FOR ATTICUS! please…
I don’t know how the voting works or whether they’ll use you email address for nefarious purposes but there’s all kinds of camera equipment to be won. A few votes would not hurt my chances from amongst the 5000+ entries…
Please click on over to the LA Times and “Vote as Best”…
If you want to enter your photogenic mutt, you can enter too… Details here.
Food, TV, Waterfalls
According to Peter Trigg’s Calendar – “My kind of Somerset”… It’s the first of September, meaning we can look at a grainy picture of All Saints’ Church, Aisholt for 30 odd days. Stateside, we’re at the end of a bank holiday weekend (Labor (sic) Day). And summer is officially over.
On Friday we went out to a Greek restaurant down the road, Eleni’s I believe it’s called, which is muy fancy, pricey and delicious and then after that to our nearest pub, the Black Cat or somesuch… Saturday was a race against time to get both cars emissions tested which took far longer than it should have. They both passed the test, but due to inadequate directions we probably contributed more greenhouse gasses into the environment while we driving two cars around lost for an hour than would be ideal. The next step is going to the DMV to get Oregon plates for the cars. You have 60 days after moving to do this, but Drsita needs them to get a parking permit up at the uni and you feel very self-conscious driving around with California plates as they’ve a reputation for uncourteous, reckless driving. And rightly so, I’ve not heard a single car horn beeped in anger since getting here. And, of course, everyone cycles or uses public transport.
On Saturday evening we went with a couple of friends to El Toro Bravo, a tapas bar would you believe. Again, excellent food. And after that we started on The Wire season 4…
Yesterday we set out early for a new set of waterfalls… Photos abound over here. Incidentally, I’ve started flagging any photos with people in on Flickr as “only available to Friends & Family” since I’m a bit wary after Sita’s picture got used in an academic paper and I only found out about it when it turned up on BoingBoing… If you’d like to be added as a Flickr friend let me know, it’s one level above ‘contact’ and you’ll get to see people as well as waterfalls and skies.
After the waterfalls we went to a farmers’ market and there I took my favourite picture of the day:
Portland farmer’s market
Coming soon… Oregon
For Sale- May Cottage in Kingston St. Mary
Nanny’s house is on the market. After a lot of work from Mum, Dad, Gill, Geoff & Rog, here’s the site: maycottageksm.co.uk
