Invention no. 324

So, in the spirit of the many programs on TV where someone tries to convince the money to throw shiny pennies their way, I bring you an idea I had a couple of days ago.

I bring you, the heat proof cooker saver!

Yes, how tedious, you say, but I've not seen one in Poundland yet and having tried to clean the stainless steel cooker top without scratching it, I know there's a market for it...

I've noticed that there are several products on sale at the moment that basically act as washable, non-stick cooking sheets. You can use them in the oven, in frying pans and the like, and fry to your hearts content without worrying about sullying your pans. One example is the "Cookaliner", I think it's made by JML but there are many clones out there:



Now, these are all fine and well, but they don't protect your cooker, and aren't something you would want in your kitchen on show all the time, they look a bit ugly. There also doesn't seem to be a product that you can put on the cooker surface rather than in a pan etc.

So, my idea is to produce large sheets of these materials, big enough to put over the entire cooker surface. There could be specific products for specific cookers, with pre-cut holes to go around the heat sources, but the cheapest design would just have cutting templates on the back for people to cut themselves, much like odour eaters have for cutting your own shoe size. There would be a rubber fire retardant rim on the underside to make sure the sheet stays in place.

As far as ugliness goes, my idea is to take advantage of the fact that these products come in different, yet uniform colours. It should be quite possible to overlay one colour over another, to create for example, black patterning on a white background. It's more than likely possible that dyes could also be used in a middle layer between two white layers, to give other colours whilst still retaining the heat resistance and non-stick properties of the sheet.

Ok, idea over. Inane blogging to recommence shortly...

More PG porn

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Microsoft Songsmith

Having seen the hilarious in it's badness commercial, my interest has been truly roused. I'm going to try get my hands on it, to bring music to everything I ever read aloud again. It seems, however, that there's already a growing community of people using Songsmith to reinterpret classic songs, with often genius results:

Enter Songsmith:



and a truly genius Van Halen:



There's got to be some kind of competition for the best one of these, the potential is huge....

Fat Balls

In a pre-emptive strike to my soon move to greener pastures, today I decided to have a go at making a bespoke fatball for the birds that frequent my garden. My ingredients were basically things I had lying around, for some reason or other I had a cup of duck fat that inspired this endeavour...

What I used:

1 cup/mug of duck fat
1/2 cup raisins
1 sachet "Oats so simple" with apple and cranberry
The rind off a packet of Sainsburys Basics Middle Bacon, chopped up - mmmm, more fat
2 slices of stale wholemeal bread, chopped up small
A sprinkle of Jelly Diamonds, for the added glamour
A sprinkle of "Oats and more, with Almonds" to add my signature nut

How I made it:

Avoiding licking my fingers/the pan, I melted all the duck fat in a saucepan. I then heated it up and lightly fried the bacon fat for a few seconds, before turning off the heat. I then added the rest, gave it a good stir and then decanted it all into a double-plastic-bag-lined large Guardian mug. Then I simply put it in the fridge to set.

I'm hoping to start an obesity crisis amongst the local birds, but I suspect the squirrels/drug fuelled miscreats might get to the ball first. Next time, I'm going to make a bird cheesecake, but instead of cheese, suet will be my weapon of choice....

Photos to come...

I'm Going Gay

Gay Paris that is.This weekend, I'm returning to the scene of the crime, when we kidnapped Jon and whisked him around the city of romance, *pun*ishing him all the way.

This time around, I'll be staying the night, and one of my aims was to take in the music while I was over there. I'm intrigued by the occaisional glimpses of French indie and electro we get over here, so I'm planning on having a night out at the uber-cool Fleche d'or. Luckily, there's some kind of music festival thing going on, so there's a few bands playing on the Saturday, although the UK gets a showing at least twice. Whatever the fuck "Reminiscent of classic and jazz at once, he generally draws inspiration from an eclectic sortiment of music and art." means, I'm all on it.

We had booked to stay at the St. Christophers Inn in Paris, which is a new branch of the chain and so would have been all modern and clean. But then I noticed an advert for a hotel on the Fleche d'or site:

http://www.mamashelter.com/images.html

Incredible Hulk lights! Big ass Macs in every room! Kiehl toiletries! Just over the road from the Fleche D'Or! I couldn't resist, so we excitedly booked that instead. I'll be sure to get photos and report back on whether it's as good as it sounds it is. It *just* opened so should be wicked!

I graduate tomorrow, so expect photos of me dressed of Mario circulating in the near future too ;)

NIN

I'm back for more waffle, and to be honest it's just a strange compulsion to analyse/advertise NIN's new online release:

... NIN have now released yet another free download, this time an EP of supporting artists for their upcoming North American tour. This comes after the free release of their latest album, "The Slip", which is to be physically released later this year with super-spangly add-ons. The strategy of "giving away" music seems counter-productive, how do you make money? The NIN approach, to me, relies on already established methods of generating income; giving "extra value" at a premium, and increasing tour sales.

By packaging extra, non-free (and physical, i.e. vinyl gatefold, stickers etc.) stuff with the physical release, the fans still have something to buy to set them apart. I'm quite keen to buy the vinyl release, just for the art work. Also, the release of FLAC format high quality audio will appeal to the burgeoning army of NIN remixers out there, for which Trent has specifically catered for on the NIN remix site. In effect people pay for the music in order to create free content for NIN, which can only be a good thing.

The free music approach will undoubtedly mean the music will reach more people, which should lead to more people being tempted to see NIN live (who are fantastic, probably the best live show I've seen in a long while).

Slow ride

Wicky wicky wa. I'm back once more, from my blogging slumber, but to be honest I'm clearly not a blog person. Any enthusiasm I get seems more and more to be devoted to random geekiness rather than any real events/opinions. This is probably a *good thing*.

So, ready the kleenex, apply the Clearasil, moisten the palms and let the geekiness commence. We're going to talk Anime , Firefox browser extensions and maybe even touch upon Ubuntu .

Anime: DEATHNOTE

First up, the mega awesome anime series Deathnote. Thanks to the Japanimaniacs on the recent Spanish field trip, I've discovered Deathnote. I'm about 13 episodes in, the tension is building and I just want to watch it all at once. The plot, whilst sounding a little wacky japes, works really well. "Light" discovers a notebook in which if you write the name of someone whilst thinking of their face, they will die. He then formulates a plan as to how to use this power for the good of the world, by killing criminals. This brings the "Worlds Greatest Detective", L., on his case.... I won't spoil the rest, other than to say Misa-Misa is a babe...

I've also been watching Naruto again, until Deathnote came along, but as far as anime ninja stories go it's great fun :)

Random Firefox Extension

I just discovered a great "Mash-up" of an extension; Add-art, which basically takes the great advert removal goodness of Ad-block, but then replaces it with art. It's currently Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, curated by the Brooklyn museum, but this apparently changes every 2 weeks.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron

After some intial trouble with my olde nvidia graphics card, the new version of Ubuntu is up and running and is even better than Gutsy. It looks fantastic, my reasonably old system doesn't struggle with it at all and it's a speedy little bugger. My reasons for using Windows are dying more and more with every update. Endnote was one such reason, but now I use the goodness that is Zotero, combined with it's Open Office addin, so Endnote has been banished. With the use of Wine and Crossover Office, I reckon I could ditch XP entirely and forget about switching to Vista.

Misc. Fitness Stuff

Oh jesus, yes, I'm actually being physically active as well as geek stuff. I've been running a little lately and using MapMyRun to work out route distances and track my times and average speed etc., even though I do the majority of it all at the gym. I'm still finding my "wall", but my best time so far for 5k is 24 mins 47 secs, so plenty of room for improvement there...

A final sin

Maybe it's just the company I keep, but I'm finding Desperate Housewives to be way more entertaining than Lost. The characters, whilst caricatures, are more likeable, the plot twists and turns as much as Lost but seems more believable and it's got a great sense of humour. I, of course, flog myself as penance for such a guilty pleasure...