Ciaran’s Random Writings

According to Google nobody has ever seen fit to utter the phrase “trains and grapes” on the internet before, so it’s lucky I’m here to put that right. In my defence, the real purpose is a bit of testing of video encoding and embedding. Firstly, Saturday morning fun with Duplo trains:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Secondly, a more serious use (it’s all relative) of the same setup, namely providing a guided tour of the grapevine:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

The camera shoots the video in MPEG format, so I used Riva FLV Encoder to convert them to the more web-friendly FLV format, and also to reduce the resolution and bitrate a bit. This Wordpress plugin made it easy to embed the videos into the post. Although it was a bit more effort, I much prefer this approach to relying on an external service to encode and host the video as I did here.

Brimham Rocks has been on my list of favourite places for a long time, so it came as a bit of a surprise when I realised we’d never taken Mia there. We’ve put that right more than once recently.

(more…)

According to research funded by ‘The Tea Council’, tea is really good for you. Whatever next?

Hmm, I’d never heard of Dr Gillian McKeith before Sunday, when I for some strange reason picked up one of her “Energy Bars” in Morrisons. I figured any food with Dr Anybody on it had to be good for a laugh.

(more…)

This may sound odd, even relative to some of the other stuff here, but I have found myself on many occasions to be embroiled in a discussion with people who don’t know the difference between a swede and a turnip. The reasons include apathy, ignorance, and differences in the way the terms are used both regionally in the UK and also internationally. Anyway, if you’re one of these people in future, this is one of the pictures I’ll be directing you towards. It’s a picture of some turnips.

Observe, (a) there is some purple to the skin, but also some white - more commonly they can be white only, or white with green, and (b) the flesh is as white as a goth on a ghost train, (c) the size, which you can’t really observe from the picture, but take it from me that they’re a bit smaller than tennis balls.

These turnips are actually quite swede-like in appearance, I have to admit, but turnips they are.

These particular turnips went into what I call a ‘vegetable pot’, which involves throwing loads of different root vegetables into a giant casserole dish with a little bit of stock and cooking slowly in the oven.

The most exciting news of late is that I made rabbit stew on Sunday afternoon. I’ve never cooked rabbit before, and other than the poor bunny itself, the ingredients and method were completely ad-hoc and random. I have to say it was excellent. We both preferred it to the hare discussed previously, but unfortunately I didn’t have it ready in time for Mia’s tea, so her verdict will have to wait until we get her portion out of the freezer at a later date.

Other highlights have been a lengthy power cut, and an attempt to explain to a Dell representative in India the meaning of the word “left”. The fact that the laptop’s down arrow key didn’t work was recorded with no problem, but left was a big issue. The explanation that it’s the opposite of right didn’t help either. There are only four arrows to choose from, but in the (lengthy) end, it seemed better to just let him record that it was the down and right arrows. Why the details of which specific keys didn’t work were relevant is beyond me anyway, but the replacement keyboard was duly delivered the next day, to the correct address. Unfortunately, bearing the name of a completely unrelated company nobody had heard of, meaning reception sent it away again. The man from Dellhi (haha, I don’t suppose I’m the first to try and be funny with that mis-spelling) wouldn’t allow me to phone the courier and ask them to bring it back. Instead, he kept me on hold (the worst on-hold music I’ve ever experienced) while he phoned and asked them to return the keyboard to Dell, and then he arranged to ship out a second keyboard, which thankfully arrived the next day.

Today we’ve been painting. Mia wasn’t interested in the paper, and preferred to try and paint her own face, the furniture and all the books on the bookshelf. I didn’t let that spoil my fun though, and pictured right is my impressionist masterpiece entitled “Dodgem”. It is quite probably my finest work ever. I’ll be doing a limited run of 100 signed and numbered prints, so send your cash now if you don’t want to miss out. £100 should do, but by all means send more if you’re feeling generous. The highest payers get the lowest numbers.

Earlier in the day, we made a brief excursion to Knaresborough, but Mia wasn’t in the mood for being dragged around for the third day in a row, so we quacked at some ducks and came home for sweetcorn fritters, which Mia refused to touch. She also lobbed her banana across the room, so it was probably the fact that we stuffed her full of satsumas in the car that was the problem. The fritters were very nice though.

This evening, burgers and chips. My basic burger recipe consists of some mince, some oats, an onion, some mushrooms and a beaten egg all mushed up together. The mixture goes in the fridge for a bit, if you can be bothered, and after that you cook them (I like our George Foreman grill thingy for this) until they’re done. I’ve done the chip recipe already of course. Nibby made some stir fried veg to go with it, and Mia wolfed everything down except the green stuff, which she put in a pile under her legs.

Tomorrow I have to actually do some work. Ouch. The only thing that might save me is if the money for the prints all rolls in between now and morning. I doubt Monet had these kind of issues to deal with.

Another trip to Swinsty Reservoir today, for a longer walk. Mia put up with three quarters of a lap of the reservoir in the pushchair before insisting on getting out. We tried letting her walk, but that just ended up with her alternately stomping off into the undergrowth to tangle with brambles, and heading off in the opposite direction. We had her hooked up in some ‘reins’, but while they are quite good for stopping her bashing her face on the floor when she charges off on some giddy mission, they don’t provide any steering control. After 20 minutes of making no headway at all, the only alternative was for her to ride the rest of the way on my shoulders, which she seemed to be satisfied with.

In the afternoon, a trip to Harrogate for more shopping, and a visit to the library.

Tonight in true Withnail and I style, we ate hare (braised), gunned down on our behalf by our friendly gamekeeper, rather than Jake the poacher. The potatoes were sautéed.

Today’s trip out, via the horse supplies shop, was to Swinsty Reservoir, north of Otley. For a change, we took the pushchair, which meant I didn’t end up crippled from carrying Mia for miles, and we actually covered some ground rather than waiting for her to inspect every single fallen leaf, which is what happens if she walks. In the end though, she got fed up of the pushchair and had to ride on my shoulders the rest of the way back.

As we were in a naughty mood, we decided to stray from the designated route, which was lucky because otherwise I wouldn’t have spotted the handsome old disembodied chap carved out of the keystone on one of the spillways between the two reservoirs. He’s positioned gazing out across Swinsty, and I’m guessing he’s some kind of Greek/Roman god of water storage, but I haven’t managed to identify him yet. He seems to be trying to break free.

If and when I do identify him, I’ll add him to the Wikipedia page I created about the reservoir when we got home.

Tonight we had butternut squash risotto for tea - it doesn’t sound very nice, but it is.

This week, Mia has been testing the swings in three different counties. After much deliberation, the results are in and they make for interesting reading:

• West Yorkshire - Funny
• Derbyshire - Funny but dark and dingy
• North Yorkshire - Funny

Yesterday was a vicious brute of a day, so it was nice to see sunshine and clear skies this morning - a chance to conduct the third test, pick up some of the stuff that had blown over around the garden, and clean out the chicken house. Being Sunday, some flesh is in the process of being roasted behind me. This week it’s part of a pig, though I have no idea which part, and it will come with roast potatoes.