Jan 11 2013

hummous

Category: awesomeness — pimento @ 3:53 pm

Several people have enquired about my hummous recipe lately, so I figured it’d make a good first post of the year. You’ll need a nice food processor for this.. I tried with a stab mixer once, it was an utter failure. Also I once killed a mate’s food processor making this.. it’s powerful stuff!

Basically, put all these in the food processor and thoroughly mulch.

3 cans of chic peas
2/3 of a jar of tahini
At least 1 bulb of garlic
Juice of 4 lemons
Splash of extra virgin olive oil
About a tablespoon of paprika
About half a tablespoon of cumin
Crack of salt & pepper

Adjust things to taste. The lemon juice makes it fluffy so it’s important to get it right. The taste of it should just come through. Garlic is also to taste, I like to go for at least 1.5 bulbs, sometimes 2, depending on intensity. If it tastes a little bland but has enough lemon juice, try adding more paprika. For best results, leave in the fridge for a few hours prior to consuming. It lets the flavours soak in together. Serve on crackers or warm, fresh bread. Or rub under armpits, that’s also good.

Happy new deer!

Jul 16 2012

that’s what i want

Category: awesomeness,ranting — pimento @ 10:41 pm

Some days I don’t get the whole money thing. It just seems to have become such a vastly abstracted concept from whence it began.. we spend so much time in pursuit of it, we run the risk of running out of time to enjoy it, but then if we do enjoy it too much, it disappears far too quickly to attain any real satisfaction. Then there’s the mob that have so much of it that loses all meaning, yet we sit here and are told that they’re just like us, only somehow are worth a hundred times more. ‘It’s the free market!’ they say, as if that’s some sort of a good thing. We get outraged when a company goes bankrupt and leaves thousands of our peers on the street, while the top brass who were meant to be running the ship somehow ‘earn’ a few tens of millions more out of it, but when the same thing is happening to our country we sit back and enjoy our 40 months intrest free tv purchases and accept that ‘hey, it’s the free market baby!’ as if that makes it all right. Those dystopian future worlds run by a few mega-corporations become a more realistic setting for the next zombie film every day.

So anyway, a few things I’ve splunked out cash on lately..

The Scythian Steppes: Seven #Sworcery Songs Localized for Japan – Seven remixes of tracks from Sword & Sworcery LP – The Ballad of the Space Babies to celebrate the launch of that game in Japan, featuring a bunch of Japanese game composers and the like. Good stuff!

The soundtrack for Shoot Many Robots by Disasterpeace. It’s fun! Give it a listen, at least.

RACE 07 with the RETRO Expansion. Race old touring cars in a pretty dang realistic way. Not easy, but oh so satisfying when you really get it hooked up. If you grab it, let me know.. we’ll blast around in old cars and generally chill out. It’s also currently 50% off.

A PS3. Well.. I needed a player for my blues ray. That I probably didn’t need to buy in the first place.. but eh, ho hum. My PSN live tag or whatever is the name of this site and stuff.

Beyond that.. nothing exciting, besides some nice boozes that are already on here. Stay awesome, lets do a thing at some point.

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Apr 17 2012

windows: the phone: 7: the redialling: 2: it’s straight up dawg time

Category: awesomeness,musing — pimento @ 9:31 pm

So, I should follow up that last WinPhoPo..st. I’m still liking my phone, I believe it contains much goodness and also much potential. Last time I ended with some gripes, one of which I should retract – you can cancel an autocorrect before it happens, you just have to tap what you just typed. The trick is noticing that there’s going to be an autocorrect action about to happen. Not unpossible, but pretty simple to miss. Since that last post there’s a couple of observations made:

- Accidental clicking when scrolling seems to be pretty common for me.. not sure if I’m doing it wrong, but I find that I look for empty space to scroll through my ‘what’s new’ feed. The feed itself however is rather grouse, though it’d be nice if there was a way to ‘share’ facebook junk on there. Given that that doesn’t seem possible in any mobile facebook thing though, I’m thinking that might be an API issue more than anything else. Also in my notifications feed it’d be nice to see the tweet that someone’s replied to. I keep forgetting.
- Custom notification sounds. I like that I can do custom ringtones, but I like to pair them with custom sms get tones as well. It’s a curious omission for a Nokia, given they’ve had that option forever, but obv. that one’s on Microsoft to add. Hopefully for WinPho8 anyway.
- Ringtones that loop without a gap would be a nice option to have, if only because that makes ‘tones formatted for iOS work properly. That one’s a minor one really.. it’s easy enough to just loop it yourself in Audacity for 30 seconds… probably.
- The last firmware update (12070) has basically doubled the battery life. Now I charge it every second night rather than every night. It also seems more consistant in its usage – No more sudden drops in life remaining. Very handy. It’s also apparently changed the white balance in the photos, which was a little off. I’ve not played mugh
- I have somehow managed to leave a giant scratch across my screen. Boo. :(

All in all I think it’s great. It does the core smartphone things very well: social networking, taking photos and sharing them, emails, basic internettery… it’s even a competent phone! Where it falls down is app support. There are some great ones, as highlighted last time, but there’s some pretty big gaps – large name apps like Instagram and such aren’t on there, even Skype (owned by MS now!) is missing. If you’re not a big user of specific apps then there’s probably something that’ll fit your needs, but hopefully there’ll be more support from devs in future.

Also games. There should be ways and reasons for devs to link xbox gaming to it easily.

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Mar 12 2012

windows: the phone: 7: the redialling

Category: awesomeness,musing — pimento @ 9:00 pm

I announced to the world several times that I would attain a Windows Phone when Nokia produced one, so when it happened I almost felt obliged to do it. Instead I decided to do it because I wanted to. Last tuesday I took delivery of a Nokia Lumia 800 (free on the Optus $49 plan (offer available until thursday), with way more than enough calling and 1.5 jiggles of downloading). I got the black one, because for some reason it was the one available on the parenthetical special offer there, else I’d probably’ve attained the cyan one. Mostly to be different. Anyhoo, this post is to wax on and off about it so I’d best get to that. First impressions upon handling the device were universally positive from all in the office who had a go. Full disclosure, I work in an office full of people who work in a telco related environment, it’s about 50/50 iPhone/Android (mostly Galaxy Nexus) users who are well into knowing about things of this nature. The two main things exclaimed were that it feels well made (it’s a little hefty) and that it has a great screen. It’s not as dense (pixel-wise) as some other phones, but everything really pops on it. We did a side-by-side with a Galaxy Nexus on the same website and the Nokia was noticably more vibrant. It was also noticibly slower to load the page though, so there’s that. Also it’s lower res, but it’s a smaller screen so heigh ho. Size-wise it’s a little more in each direction than an iPhone4S, with a 3.7″ screen that’s super responsive, though if I use the side of my finger my nail seems to cause some false clicking when I’m trying to scroll.

The Metro UI is a suberbly coherant thing, perfectly content to present an electronic device rather than being reminiscent of a notepad, casino, wild west saloon and three other things at other times. No drop shadows, no foofaraw, just a super clean no fuss look. I really like it. I’ve heard some gripes about the back button being odd here and there but I’ve no idea why as it immediately clicked for me. Back goes back, funnily enough. If you want to multitask you hit start again to start again, and to get to the other tasks you simply hold back and select the other thing. Simple. It is a little funny to have a ‘search the web using Bing’ button present at all times, especially when there’s an additional soft search button that pops up for things like your contact list. Not sure I need to have Bing available to me at all times, but that’s really a minor thing. There’s hardware buttons on the right side for volume (also functions to silence the ringer, it’s a press and a tap), lock and camera (tap the screen to take the shot (I can’t take the shot!)) so that’s all covered nicely. Battery life is edging into two days, though I’m assured by The Internet that the latest firmware will up to triple it. Even if it doubles it, that’s pretty good.

As for using the thing, it’s all pretty simple. Import your contacts over bluetooth from your previous phone (super easy to get em from my old Nokia N97) and they’re uplourded to Windows Live, which is apparently what MSN is now. I found that it was a lot easier to sort them out from there on the win Live website as I had the capability to merge contacts together. Given my contacts list traces its way back to single entries per phone number stored on the (old, I had to get a micro-SIM for this) SIM card, I had a bit of merging to do. Also it was a good time to clean up my MSN contacts list. It would be nice to be able to merge similar contacts on the device rather than just link them, especially given one of the drawbacks of the live site – 25 contacts displayed per page and no way to select contacts from two pages to merge. Bleh. Once that was sorted though it was plain sailing to link my twitter and facebook accounts, then link all those contacts together. The nice thing about that is that the phone will grab pictures for each contact from either site, and if I pinned someone to my start page it would keep me abreast of their latest internet based witterings. As it is I have a news feed that can be set to any or all sources and a notifications page that doesn’t seem to be able to give me direct messages from Twitter. The official app can take care of that, but it seems to be an oversight that could be easily fixed. Speaking of the Twitter app, it’s been given a great Metro design – I think I prefer it to the iOS one.

As for other nice apps, I’ve found that AU Weather Pro is great for weather related things, Fuse is a great looking RSS feed dealie (and works with Google Reader accounts) IRC7 seems to be a nice IRC app and there’s a WordPress app for updating this thing on the fly. Fuse I will choose to gush over, as one of the themes available straight up is called Ipsum and I really like it – the names of the feeds are used to indicate unread messages and such. Check it before I wreck it:

I really like it, though I’ve not used it a whole lot yet. It just looks cool, so I’m going to next time I’m wanting to read my feed while away from a computer.

Lastly, here’s a sample picture. It’s not bad, given it was overcast and evening times. I imagine I’ll photog a bunch more things, so keep an eye on my tweets if you want to see more.

Now, to finish on a downer, here are some gripes constructive criticisms:
- The search button could be more useful
- It has Nokia Maps as well as Maps, Nokia Music as well as [Zune] Music + Videos, and a Nokia Blue as well as a just plain Blue colour scheme. If Nokia are going to integrate it should probably be one or the other – seems that Nokia wins for Maps and Blue, but not sure about music as I’ve not put any on there.
- The apps list (think ‘all programs’) could be unwieldy with a bunch more apps on there, even with the start menu to collate my selection of them. Might be nice to be able to nest similar things in sub menus.
- I’m not sure if there’s a way to cancel an autocorrect before it happens. There should be. Otherwise the keyboard and suggestive text is great.
- No wireless hotspot. This isn’t a phone limitation actually, it’s Optus that need to enable it. When I bugged them on twitter their guy said it ‘should be released with future updates’, so hopefully that comes to fruition.

In closing, I think I made a great decision to try something new, especially when (I choose to be hopeful) the wireless hotspot is opened up and I can link my ipod touch to it. I’m reckoning that the Metro UI has some great advantages over iOS and I’m looking forward to see where it goes. Hopefully the team there can stay on track with it and keep it going from strength to strength, especially given its newly found integration into Windows 8. More on that one later…

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Mar 03 2012

car porn

Category: awesomeness — pimento @ 9:26 pm

Jan 11 2012

heavenly choral sounds

Category: awesomeness — pimento @ 7:54 am

An idea born from necessity (the cafe at work is closed until next month), formed in the crucible of all truely great ideas (the shower), constructed using the finest of materials (a pushbike bottle holder and cable ties) and put together at the last minute (midnight last night). When I say that I may be a genius, you may rest easy knowing that there is some fact behind it. Behold!

Dec 09 2011

my magnetic clutches

Category: awesomeness — pimento @ 4:32 pm

Knocked up a quick addition to my wardrobe door. For those not in the know, my wardrobe is directly next to my front door, so it’s convenient. Perks (?) of a studio apartment.

It’s the side panel from an old server, you may remember the rest of it from this post. It’s screwed to the wardrobe door then covered in neodymium magnets. The idea is shamelessly stolen from series two of James May’s Man Lab, though they suggested attaching it to the ceiling and using a grabby pole to reach things. Fun!

Oct 09 2011

plitchen kinth

Category: awesomeness,randomness — pimento @ 8:06 pm

The latest in a long dormant series of things I have built is complete! Previewed here for premium members, it’s a plinth for my kitchen that I might place my breadmaker on, or perhaps utilise as additional bench space for cookery. The last rubbish coat of varnish was slapped on last weekend, so today it came home. As you’ll see, I couldn’t get a car for the occasion, so I went with the SEA method of furniture moving. It was super effective!

Very securely attached to el beastie.

The marble came separate, as I’m not silly. It was actually a more wobbly ride on this trip due to the weight of the slab and tools in the back.

With wheels for +10 to manouverability. Matches the desk! In fact, it was the remains of the same tin of varnish.

In place and ready for plinthination. Takes up a bit of room, but is still better than the ol’ pair of milkcrates that the breadmaker used to perch upon. All in all, great success! .. Except for the rubbish varnishing job. I’m lazy, and those slats were really hard to get into…

Sep 17 2011

postie is back, baby

Category: awesomeness — pimento @ 4:45 pm

The beast is back! Huzzah! Apparently some punk kids were trying to push it into the water at a local park but someone yelled out at them and they ran off. The fuzz called me down to get it, while I was there they received a call about some punk kids throwing things into the water at a different nearby park, so they went off to investigate while the forensics lady dusted for prints. Exciting stuff! She didn’t find anything though. It’s now chained up to the building and the Bonnie, so hopefully that’s the end of that.

Today I replaced the basket on the back because the old one was pretty beaten up.. it was already a bit crappy, and it seemed to have copped it a bit in its month and a bit kidnapping so now there’s a shiny new one. This time I mounted it about an inch further back and I put some pipe insulation foam on it so it shouldn’t hurt when it belts me in the small of the back so much. It’s at a height where it just gets in under the back padding in my riding jackets.

Mar 07 2011

let them eat bread

Category: awesomeness — pimento @ 8:44 pm

I recently purchamachased a breadmaker, thus beginning a benign and relatively humdrum series of events entitled (with much ridiculous grandiousity) The Breadmaker Saga. Read on to learn more, bemused reader.

It was a dark and stormy moment in time somewhere in the world, but in Sydney it was sunny and humid. I decided ‘this is the day.. I’m going to buy a breadmaker!’ My travels took me to the local Breville factory seconds outlet, but they didn’t carry the model I wanted. My next few stops left me similarly empty-handed, so I gave up and went home.

The following day however turned out much more fruitful. With quarry sighted (after I asked where the breadmakers were.. nowhere near the toasters?!) and firmly grasped, I approached the register and went through the usual rituals. Once firmly ensconced into the back of The Beastie, we were off home and into a world of bread! Or so I thought….

Once Sir Breadmakerton was placed upon it’s plinth, I put it to work. Initial results were positive, and tasty! Much lunch was provided for, in sammich form. However, things soon took a more sinister turn. It seems my next attempt, with new measuring apperatus contained not enough flour, and lo – there was FAILBREAD. So aghast was El Breadmakersaurus at such a failure, it simply gave up. When I switched it back on later for another attempt, I was met with E:03. Further attempts on following days were met with a similar refusal, so an exchange for a more willing unit was arranged.

Breaddus Makerus MkII was brought home much fanfare and great hope for breaddy goodness.. and we were not disappoint! Genesis loaf the second was a definate success. One thing that has been noted during this saga is that I might need a bigger toaster. I’ll have to take a slice into some toaster stores and try some out. I’m sure they won’t mind, what good is visiting a showroom and not trying out the goods? The most recent bread has some garlic and chilli masala in it.. I’ve yet to try it out, but its inception was not without its problems.. this time there was too much rising. Ahh well – its tastyness will be measured tomorrow. For now, have some more pictures.

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