http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/518729

but not for the puzzles.

-

I love the internets. It provides me with stuff I can use. Isn't character background wonderful?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8349923.stm 'Road trains' get ready to roll

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8182003.stm Call for debate on killer robots

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1127012/Police-arrest-goat-accused-armed-robbery.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8296190.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0m8bebUGq4&NR=1

*pow* right in the kisser.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/quarter-of-global-population-can%27t-get-drunk-or-look-at-boobs-200910082122/

This is quite worrying.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/513573

I saw this and thought of you

http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/nigella-lawson/ham-in-coca-cola-recipe_p_1.html
(use left-overs to make) http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=13831


http://www.oddee.com/item_96801.aspx

I wanted to write this down becasue it was tasty, and I'll forget otherwise.

I had a couple of pork steaks in the freezer that needed eating. I had some other left-overs.

Ingredients:
2 pork loin steaks
some new potatoes (for 2)
some carrots (for 2)
a glass of mead (just under a quarter bottle) (I used Norfolk Mead 'broadland', which is a dark mead like Moniack.)
a generous teaspoon of easy ginger (about a 1-inch cube of root ginger chopped)
a generous teaspoon of dried sage
a veggie oxo cube
100 ml of double cream
a teaspoon of dried mint (or a sprig of fresh mint!)

Method:
Put the pork steaks in a tupper box and pour the mead over. Then add the ginger and sage, try to evenly distribute between the steaks.
Cover steaks and leave to marinade for 48 hrs in the fridge.
put the potatoes on to boil up with the mint
put the carrots on to boil up
Take the steaks out of the marinade, add the oxo cube to the marinade, reserve marinade juice.
Fry steaks until done
Take steaks out of the frying pan, put marinade juice into the frying pan, add cream.
Stir and reduce sauce a bit.

Add to plates and consume.

Yum.

My house was burgled. No signs of forced entry, everythign was locked. Found the back door left ajar.

One thing gone. My lappy, in it's bag.

not the wii on the windowsill next to it. not the two desktops on the floor next to it. not the other laptop, not in a bag, by the door. not any of the big crate o booze. not the bag full of cash, creditcards and my mobile. Not the two amps and the guitar in the hall.

a laptop bag, on my sofa. that's it.

obviusly it had everythign digital that i have made over the last two years on it. And that's quite a lot. plus all my RPG library (character sheets plus books). plus all the music I scored off Dom (who has gone), and Eric (who has gone), and the work music repository (which has gone).

I'm not right happy right now.

Green, is Good. I was in the internets trying to find some good source material for my new armour (more on that in a moment) and I found a good community FREE Lineage 2 server. So I rolled an orc. Words cannot express just how awesome it feels to be green again. And the most kick-ass of the greenies to boot. On a server of people who disrespect the green. Largely because the L2 community as a whole disrespects the green, because it's green.

Anyway - armour. I agreed to go to a con with Mew. I figure that I haven't been to a con in a while and they are quite fun. But it's an anime con, and my tolerance for annoying fanboys (and fangirls) is dismally low. So I thought of the most kick-ass anime thing I could reasonably cozplay. Which was an Overlord, from the Linage 2 video game. The get-up is feral-inspired shamanic, but I'm going to build it in white, a-la the Majestic set. This will give me a persona to hide behind at the con, and allow me to 'IN-CHARACTER' tell them to chew my manly green ass if they piss me off.

But spending a shit-load on just a cozplay is SILLY. So I needed a set of extra-shiny but workable armour for SCA fighting. So I'm going to make it SCA legal too. Then I'm going to go to the SCA event in it as well, and have everyone there beat me senseless for wearing silly, shiny, white, anachronistic armour. Which will make it more kick-asss my making it not shiny white. So when I take it to the G for monstering, it will look lived-in and used, and 'white'.

And awesome.

Like orcs.

It's not often that something interesting happens at work. Something interesting that cought me completely by surprise happend today.

I won an award. For outstanding behaviour. !!!! (!) .

A manager nominated me for the 'who do teh managers think is useful this month' award. That's not waht it's called really, but it's what it means.

Turns out they liked the PHP course. Pity the designers are not so groovy as to have done the excercises. I don't hold out much hope for them filling up the excercises by the time the next talk comes up. Then they will just look at me blankly because they didn't do the work...

cooking-sama

serial environmentalist

The video archive of the first zombie war. (ongoing project.. donate now!)

I need chocolate.

Talky toaster might be more universally understood, but I can't believe I hadn't thought of this before last night.

So.. I heard you leik Mudkipz...

1 nub neonate: $free
surviving 10 years: $blood
linearing in summer in full armour: $sweat
losing ghouls to get psychology 5: $tears
1 loooove Mudkipz!!! : Priceless.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mudkips

Blegh. It's too hot. I wouldn't mind, but most of the day I'm wearing 2 jumpers. Ahhh, the wonders of modern technology :) Making it too damn cold ALL YEAR ROUND.

Anyhew. I downloaded Chrome, the new browser from everyone's favourite mega-corp today. I must say that it's pretty much a browser. It doesn't have mouse gestures (that I've found), and it doesn't have the GODDAMN AMAZING firebug. It does re-assign all my (web-type) file associations (so they don't open with an editor, they open with chrome). grrrrr. It does not show me when a page has a javascript error (which as you might imagine is quite important to me). grrrrr.

Chrome is highly failing to wow me right now.

So I spent some time over the weekend re-doing the skin on the VIP site in preparation for re-doing the code ahead of me spending some XP. Hell, it hasn't happened in a year or so, I thought it deserved something special.

VIP test page

If you don't like it, leave a comment, tell me why, I might re-design it. If you think it's design is shit - you draw a better one. Send me an appropriate rez image, and I'll skin it up. Otherwise STFU.

In other news, August is going to me busy. 5 events spread across 4 weekends. MMMMMMMMMMMMM.

And, I have been asked to give the designers a shot at PHP coding. This is the ultrabasics, and 3/4 or them won't get it. So if you want to read along with mama:

Our Design test area

This is a free invite to anyone reading this, provided I know you. If you are any good, you might get a job. We are hiring :)

I've been sitting on my artistic nature. Forcing it to do stuff is hard :( Anyway, today I got the two promo scrolls done for the scrollwork illuminations I hope to sell at the GEF. So the questions are:

If you saw these next to a sign saying "Enquire within for scroll commissions", would you?

If you saw these next to a sign saying "Scroll blanks 1 stell", would you stop to buy one?

Elven script promo scroll

Cathayan script promo scroll

For reference, both of them say 'the same thing'. 'prizes' for working out what that is...

I have recently been tackling an issue in our database to do with timing the refresh of materialized views. (with a z for our american 'brothers')

When you issue a create materialized view statement to oracle, or use the oracle enterprise manager to set hourly or daily refresh, you can experience time drift. If a view takes 3 minutes to refresh, then the next time it goes off will be 3 minutes later than you thought.

Read more about ( setting oracle materialized views to refresh at a specific time )

The healer's guild is one of the poorest guilds on Erdreja. Largely becasue we are good people who do what we do to help people, and people kind of expect that. If someone has been maimend horribly, they EXPECT the healers guild to expend our power to fix people. damnit argh. I'm liking my line at the moment.. "What do you expect me to do about it, I'm not a healer.."

We also don't have anything we can sell/ tax like the mages (ritual slots) or armourers (kit).

But anyway. I've come up with a few schemes to get some cash into the guild, but I wondered if anyone else might come up with some thoughts.. What can we sell/ do to get money into the guild?

Second - does anyone want a lift/ got room for 1 (with kit)? - I'm in the same position as I was at the moot and would quite like the company/ split the petrol.

Third - If any of the new LURPS bods are watching, or if anyone wants to re-roll (or get recruited on this character!), the temple of eyes is recruiting strong individuals with a less battlefield bent. We are 'non-factional', becasue politics gets in the way, although currently I am technically a Hart (Thier dental plan is good). Our purview is to seek knowledge and bring new knowledge into the world, either through research, endeavour or just plain getting out & doing it. Anyone wanting to know more, grab me!

That was the event that was :) As with most mainlines, not a right lot happened, a faction got thier big bad out and got his ass whooped, drinks were had and funk went funky.

The healer's guild actually succeeded on doing something everyone mocked us for. We healed over 50 thousand enemy troops to DEATH. In one go.

IN THE FACE.

(yay go us!)

For the first time ever I actually had my phone on me at the event and had to use it! First alarmed wake up at a main event evaaaar. We were returning to the site of a couple of weeks back's little debarcle to grab bodies & have a scout. AT FIRST LIGHT. (IC anyway at least.) so OC anyone not present at 10am time in doesn't get the boat and can't get the brief (of what you were doing for the last 3 hours IC). So I had to be up & fed by 10. Seasoned vertrans may know just how hard that can be on sunday morning.

But also sunday night I came back to my tent. And my phone blipped at me because it had a message. I was surprised. I was IC head. So I did what any sane scout would do when surprised (by something that didn't warrant running away from). I gave it some stabbage & through from behind.

It appears that this may have been mis-construed.

Whilst I disapprove of having to air my dirty laundry, I will say this: Thank you to those of you who have helped.

IC is a killer.