The truth about Win95

A post by Neil Gaiman on an email sent to him by a fan about a spoof synopsis of LOTR led me to a nine-year old Win95 joke on the Tolkien sarcasm page, which I'd never heard before. Hilarious. So as not to spoil the punchline, it's in white, and needs to be highlighted to be read:

What you did not know about Windows 95
Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit.

As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows 95 on my PC. I told him how happy I was with this operating system, and showed him the Windows 95 CD. To my surprise he threw it into my microwave oven and turned the oven on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw a inscription, an inscription finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE10E510CC98D444AA08E1324

'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said.

'No, but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'

One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...

Clarifying note: I used to be a Windows user, and still have it installed as the main OS on my older computers (Win 95 on a PI, 98 on a PII). But the XP SP2 download killed my Toshiba HDD (so dead I almost lost everything on it), and I moved over to Linux. (Well, I'd been meaning to for months, and it just gave me a wee push in the right direction.)

I'm not a Bayreuth junkie, honest.

Yikes! I would have never called myself an opera buff, but scored a freaky 80% on a mock Wagner Ring Cycle quiz on Guardian Unlimited:

"Wagner's Ring
You scored 8 out of a possible 10
Evidently a Bayreuth junkie, you've clearly read the writing on Wotan's spear and could get round Valhalla in a blindfold. If you're not already wearing horns in your helmet, we suggest you lighten up and go to see Bernstein's On the Town instead."

It's weird 'cos I've never paid much attention to Wagner's operas (something about his anti-semitism creeping into his art that I don't like), and only saw "Das Rheingold" on BBC2 on Easter Sunday. BBC2 were meant to televise "The Walküre" live, but could only screen the first act as Bryn Terfel (as Wotan) was ill.

Then again, GU quizzes aren't all that difficult. Of four options, there's always one that's too way-out (e.g. references to the OTHER ring trilogy, where Tolkein borrowed some of Wagner's made-up mythology), one that's too anchored in the real world, and one that's close enough, but has a giveaway falseness you can guess around. Hmmm... That wasn't very clear. I should make better notes of the GU quizzes when I do them.

Hey! I've just noticed that my weather pixie changes her kimono. It's green now, but was red last night... Aye. She's a true pixie all right.

Denim junihitoe

Browsing other "kimono"-tagged photos on flickr brought up an interesting 12 layer kimono, made up of denim, with leather trimmings (click here for the back view). Although it's probably just an exhibition piece, I think it's absolutely fantastic that old national costumes are still being experimented on and brought up to date by modern designers/artists.

As an aside, I thought I'd find out a bit more about junihitoe. The 'juni' refers to the Japanese romanji word for twelve, and the 'hitoe' refers to unlined kimonos. Such kimono were worn back in the Heian period (794-1185 CE) by noble women. The Sugino Costume Museum's site has an excellent page that shows each layer sequentially (reached by first opening a pop-up Java window from the first photo: 'Juni-hitoe'; then clicking on 'Habillage d'un juni-hitoe'). It appears that the 12 layers aren't comprised solely of kimonos. The junihitoe on this website has the following layers:

• Nagabakama, a pair of trousers
• Kosode, kimono with short sleeves
• Hitoe, an unlined under-kimono
• Five Itsutsuginu layers, with a different coloured trim per layer
• Uchiginu, the top kimono
• Uwagi, another top kimono
• Karaginu, a vest
• And finally, Mo, the train

Gorgeous! But oh-so impractical! And you'd have to have so many different pieces to coordinate with the appropriate season. It's definitely a ladies-who-lunch thing. There are also photos of the accessories needed for the elaborate hair-dos (kamiagegu), fans, tabi without a split, and rather clumpy looking shoes that they probably shuffled about in when they weren't sitting pretty...

Another excellent site originates from Kyoto's Costume Museum. Its pages on the Heian period has a host of photos, accompanied with explanations, of various costumes worn by different members of the court.

Biodiesel in Scotland

From BBC news: Green biodiesel production starts.

Finally, Argent Energy are ready to roll with cleaned-up chip fat (and other cooking oils) as biodiesel. While biodiesel by no means solves the problem of increasing carbon dioxide levels, it will help alleviate our dependence on fossil fuels, which must run out at some point. [It cannot be stressed enough at this point that biodiesels will NOT help reduce the damage we do to our atmosphere. It's merely a stop-gap, and cars using it will still release carbon dioxide. Fewer of the other pollutants, and less dependence on fossil fuels and the damage we do to the environment to get at it!]

But this will not the perfect biodiesel solution I would have liked. Argent are planning to blend their biodiesel with mineral diesel, and call it "Bio-plus". Now, that seems like quite a cop-out to me, and I know quite a few other people who will be disappointed to hear that this won't be marketed as a purely recycled fuel. Sundance Renewables in Wales are a co-operative that produce and supply 100% recycled biodiesel to Welsh businesses. To be fair to Argent, they're planning to refine 25k tonnes a year, have probably put quite a lot of investment in complex machinery (it doesn't have to be that complex on a small scale), and must answer to shareholders etc.

Prior to recent commercial developments, there were stories in the news about some Welsh folk using Asda's cooking oil in their cars, with one of them (John Nicholson, an environmentalist) having gone out of his way to recycle chip fat and contacting Customs to pay duty on what he put in his car. Following the media hoo-hah, Asda also announced that some of their fleet would use fat used to roast chickens. :)

And let's not forget that diesel engines were first invented by Rudolf Diesel expressly to use vegetable oil. He mysteriously disappeared on a ferry crossing the Channel... To end on a sober note, George Monbiot had a wee rant last year in the Guardian about the endemic blindness to the downsides of switching to biodiesel on a massive scale, namely the commercial growth of oil-rich crops over that of food crops. Naturally, I hope his worst-case scenario does not come to pass, where political idiocy prevales over common sense, and the nutritional needs of the poor are neglected in the pursuit of alternative fuels. But you never know with our money-hungry society.

Funny feet

Funny feet
Originally uploaded by framboise.

I've got weird feet. Those big toes look enormous! The kimono is an orangey komon, with a print that mimics shibori. It's quite pretty, but oh-so-orange. This kimono fits a lot better than my other two. For one, it's long enough to have a decent waist-fold. Plus, the sleeves are almost long enough to touch my wrists, if I tuck my elbows in a little.

I don't think I'm any taller than the average Japanese woman, but I must be descended from orang utans (very likely in my neck of the woods), 'cos the sleeves are all too short for me. This seems to be a common phenomenon for vintage kimonos. Since learning a little more about kitsuke, I've decided to be more discerning when bidding for items on ebay. I've been trying to perfect a search string to pull up kimonos with long-enough sleeves, but because some people publish in inches, I'm bound to miss quite a few out. Oh well, I guess a slow and painful trawl through the better merchants will have to do.

Kitsuke attempt
Originally uploaded by framboise.

Courgette Caterpillar

Tonight's dinner: Agedashi tofu and courgette omelette.

Recipe for agedashi tofu:

• Take some silken tofu, and drain on kitchen towels for 20 min.
• Heat an inch or two of corn oil in a wok/pan until just before it starts to smoke.
• Coat the tofu cubes in some potato flour, and place carefully in the oil. Keep turning the tofu cubes so they're just lightly crispy all over (almost golden brown).
• Transfer to small bowls, and spoon over the sauce that has been brought up to the boil:
  1/2 cup dashi stock
  1 tbsp soya sauce
  1 tbsp sake
  1 tsp mirin

Eat ASAP, as it gets soggy very quickly. It's scrummy!

Ingredients	Agedashi tofu	Eggy eggs	Funny omelette

And for dessert: mango sorbet from M&S, and coconut and lemongrass pannacotta from Stichill Jerseys (bought at the almost fortnightly Edinburgh Farmers' Market; 1st and 3rd Sat of every month).

Technorati tags: agedashi, recipe, tofu.

Quiptic No. 280

I've been neglecting the crosswords lately. Been just a bit too busy with other things. So with "Lethal Weapon 2" playing in the background, I decided to tackle this week's Guardian quiptic crossword before it's out of date. I'll get round to doing No. 279 at some point...

Some nice clues (as usual, highlight below to see answer):

• Sodium smell developing (7)
  (Na)scent
• Paying too much council tax? (9)
  Overrated... Quite apt given the recent re-jigging of council taxes.
• German cake lost out to the French number (7)
  Stollen (breakdown: stol(le)-n)
• Up in arms (7)
  rampant
• And finally, a classic clue: Decreases the clubs (5)
  Irons

Food nostalgia

I've been reading a few food blogs this evening:

• Cooking with Amy
• I was just really very hungry
• Delicious Days
• Chocolate and Zucchini
• Is my blog burning

And I was thinking of how much I'm going to miss having a decent sized kitchen, not that there's even enough space in it now. I'm given to understand that apartments in LA are über-expensive to rent, and we'll probably have to downsize a lot. I'm going to miss my baking tins/trays, my two drawers of kitchen gadgets and utensils that have taken me 10 years to accumulate, my crazy but effective fan oven, our collection of all sorts of different flavoured alcohols (for cooking, not drinking), a pantry of hard-to-find dried and bottled food, and a whole host of other cooking things. The upside is that there will be plenty of 'ethnic' food stores in LA. Whether we'll be able to find them or get to them without sitting in traffic jams, and polluting the air, is another thing.

I'm sure the restaurants there will be good, but will we have any money to eat out? We've not eaten out much in Edinburgh recently... Quite a few of our favourite restaurants have closed in the last year. Among the much-missed are:

• Fitzhenry's - replaced with a Smokestack, of all things (sacrilege),
• JM's - a honest-to-goodness French bistro run by one man and a rotating waitress, where we spent many a happy evening getting stuffed, and
• a Chinese restaurant on Inverleith Row - never knew its name, but it had good dim sum (for Edinburgh, that is... still can't compare to Glasgow/London, let alone Singapore/Hong Kong).

There are still plenty of excellent joints in town, but those places held special memories for us. JM's in particular was a real find. We've had a whole host of French bistro-like places that excel in 'Scottish-French' cooking (even though the demise of the Pierre Victoire chain cooled the field a little), but none had the true atmosphere of a man/woman in the kitchen, sweating over several hot stoves to feed a small, but crowded room of regular customers. I wonder where he is now...

Was left to my own devices tonight, so I baked a sole (don't know which type) with some lemon zest and juice squeezed into a little dashi (Japanese fish stock), with a very wee dram of random alcohol (Martini this time), and a knob of butter. How is it that when I cook, the kitchen looks untouched when I'm done, but when a blokey cooks, it looks like a wee tornado passed through the kitchen?

Giggle

Glutamate Grape (^o^) I wonder if it improves performance in the Morris water or T mazes.
Can't stop smiling (^_^) Sero-Tonic (^_^) Ursa Major (^_^)

As for Scientific American's editorial, it was bleeding hilarious! It was *almost* as good as what I think was the all-time great: T. rex DNA. It's a real shame that ensembl didn't archive the page, but a Google found this.

Guardian Unlimited has an April Fools' quiz. Results:

Can you spot the April fools' gags?
You scored 9 out of a possible 9
You're no fool. April 1 holds no fears for someone with your ability to separate fact from fiction.

Sad, but true: I'd read in some Saturday/Sunday newspaper's magazine that Alexander McQueen scribbled graffiti in the lining of Prince Charles' jacket when he worked on Saville Row. As for elephants mimicing sounds, they're very canny animals.

Shawn the shortbread sheep

A rather blurry shot of a piece of shortbread I baked yesterday for some friends who are doing some DIY in their new flat and havenae time to eat, let alone cook. I used a 6-4-2oz recipe, which gave a much better hold than my usual 2-2-1 proportions. The 6-4-2 recipe is just right for two baking sheets of shortbread, whereas my old recipe had to be spread over three or four due to the way it oozed everywhere. In addition to the flour, butter and sugar, I added 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger, a good pinch of ground cloves, and just to experiment, some caraway seeds.

I don't normally like pre-ground spices, but it's really handy for cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, and other baking spices. I can never get small amounts pounded finely enough to be sifted, but that's probably due to my modern upbringing. Made some ducks too.

Technorati tags: recipe, shortbread.

Eilean A` Cheo

Cuillin and river
Originally uploaded by framboise.

Skye truly is an island of mist. We woke to misty wetness every morning, but the weather usually cleared up by lunchtime to leave the most beautiful blue skies. Skye is now accessible by a toll-free bridge from the Kyle of Lochalsh, which takes some of the magic of the Western Isles away from it, and makes its roads the busiest of the islands we've been to. I've always loved the short ferry trips from the west of Scotland, and being able to take a half minute drive just isn't the same.

The hard rock that makes up Skye makes it look quite alien, as there is hardly any vegetation on the higher hills and mountains. And you don't have to get particularly high up to get the most impressive views. This shot was taken in Glen Brittle, by the base of an easily accessed waterfall, Eas Mors (see other photo). The peak in the back is of one of the Cuillins, but I can't remember which one. We observed someone picking mussles in the bay at the end of Glen Brittle, but didn't join in for fear of spoiling our appetites for dinner at the Three Chimneys that evening. If you're a foodie, and sometimes despair of the quality of restaus in rural Scotland, it'd do you a lot of good to get out to Skye. There, they're proud of their local produce, of which the shellfish is particularly good. For example, fishermen bring in fresh langoustines from Loch Bay, to be scoffed locally at the Lochbay Seafood Restaurant in Stein.

Skye is also chock full of craft shops and galleries. The harsh environment probably leads to a lot of time to sit, think and create during the winter months. We spent a fair amount of time in the Skye Silver shop, as well as the Raven Press, where we saw the most intricate woodblock prints and just HAD to get a wee souvenir print of Skye with minke whales by Neist Lighthouse. Our visit didn't last long enough, but we were glad to get out when we did, for on our drive home, we saw the most ridiculous convoys of cars heading in (probably to take up every last BnB and hotel room on the island). Typical Easter weekend then...

Oh yeah, the mini banana loaves came in handy as carbo and sugar snacks to keep us going between massive breakfasts and dinners.

Eas Mors	The Three Chimneys	Loch Bay from Stein	Clear blue skies

For more photos of Skye and Eilean Donan, see my Flickr set.

Banana, chocolate and walnut loaf

Another super easy G&B recipe. Yum! Decided to split the 2lb recipe so we could bring some small cakes with us to Skye. Can't walk very far without the occasional carbohydrate snack to sustain us. The 1lb loaf took 35min at 180degC (150degC in my fan oven), and the 6 little loaves took about 25min. End result out of the 1lb corrugated cardboard "tin":

Technorati tags: banana, cake, recipe.

Culcutta Cup

Aye, the game against the auld enemy seems a wee bit redundant now. But I'm still hoping Scotland does well enough to shut up those arrogant English TV commentators and fans.

19:20 edit: Partisan commentary yet again by the English. Scotland seem to be trying a lot harder, and deserve more tries than are on the scoreboard.

19:44 edit: England 43-22 Scotland. Oh well. They tried hard and didnae give up. Again, defence was appalling, but perhaps they can spend the summer working on that when the Lions are on tour.

Wales goes for the Grand Slam

Gethin Jenkins, what fantastic footwork! Great instinct there, to kick it rather than scoop it up. Brill charge down!
John Hayes (No. 3) doesn't look stereotypically Irish; he looks like he's a member of the Munster family. ;) (pun completely intentional)
16:16 edit: Wales 16-6 Ireland. It's tight. O'Gara has made a few mistakes, and tried to make up for them with some good kicking. Wales seem a bit more determined and confident, as evidenced by a 5-man tackle of can't-remember-who just off their touchline. Ireland are showing the occasional brilliance, but shame about the mutliple mistakes they're making.
16:48 edit: It may be Morgan's try, but boy oh boy was Shanklin storming! Great catch, run and pass. Went for the pass for a try rather than the glory. Lovely Welsh teamwork!
17:13 edit:So they've hardly touched the ball in the last 10 minutes... At least they finished the game with the ball in their hands... Wales have the Grand Slam!
Hip hip hurray for Wales!
Final score: Wales 32-20 Ireland.

Italy 13-56 France

That gives France a 43-point difference (a grand total of 53-points over their 5 games), one more than they required before start of play today to improve their chance of winning the championship should Ireland beat Wales. No thanks to a complete collapse by the Italians in the last 20 min, the 6-nations championship is still wide open between France, Ireland and Wales. Unless, of course, Wales wins. Come on the Welsh! Oggie-oggie-oggie! (Very quietly, so as not to jinx the result: Oi Oi Oi!)
As it stands:

	Played	point diff	Points
Wales	4	62	8
France	5	53	8
Ireland	4	37	6

Who cares about the rest? For once, I don't give a darn what happens in the last game against the Auld Enemy. This is the tightest Six Nations Championship I can remember, and it's great!
Edit: And here's the breakdown from the BBC.

In hot soup over swan

From BBC news: Police swan find hits wrong note
A classic Scottish news story. Some 'jobsworth' has decided to investigate the Master of Queen's Music's possession of a swan carcass (now, try to dissect the nouns in that one). Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has been warned by the police that regardless of the fact that the swans died naturally, they take his possession of swan carcasses seriously. Thanks to The Times for the classic quote from the spokesperson for the Northern Constabulary: “Our inquiries are continuing,” and their fantastic headline: "Composer may do bird for eating swan". Only in the boondocks can such things happen. Perhaps Sir Peter can use this farcical situation to write a comedy opera. ;)

Chromosome pendant, work in progress

chromosome pendant
Originally uploaded by framboise.

I'm in the process of making a silver pendant for myself. The inspiration was originally from a pair of flowers from Linda Macdonald's collection. I've dropped the flowers, and given it a twist so it resembles a pair of mitotic chromosomes, with a few gold rings representing the G-banding. The grooves were cut out using a size 4 saw blade, giving a groove for the 0.5mm gold wire to fit in. It's not a tight enough fit for the gold to be inlaid, so I'm going to use some gold solder to stop the gold rings from moving around. Close-up of the grooves below.

Quiptic No. 278

This week's fave clue from the Guardian's Quiptic Crossword (No. 278 set by Moley):
Issue on the Web in fourteen lines (6)
Highlight to see answer:

sonnet

Wales gives it some welly

Watching the replay 'cos we went for an invigorating walk this afternoon in an effort to avoid depressing ourselves. The first Welsh try was quite nice work, but the second was yet another mega Scottish blooper. Just what part of don't do that again did they not understand? (Poor wee souls must be devastated...) Then I lost count of the Welsh tries, but mistakes were made.It was as if the man-marking failed miserably. We have the weakest defence of all the 6 nation sides; even the Italians could do a better job. (Plus, they have a good kicker. Poor ol' Paterson tries his best, but he's not one of life's natural kickers. Not like Andy Merhtens anyway.) Wales definitely walked all over Scotland in the first half. How demoralising. Wales took their feet off the pedal later, and allowed Scotland three rather nice tries. So, Scotland's defence was pathetic, but at least some tries were scored. That's some consolation. However pitiful. Come on Scotland. You've got to do better against the Auld Enemy.

No luck for the Irish

I was looking forward to a Grand Slam showdown between Ireland and Wales, but a strengthened French side stopped all that. It was decent start for Ireland, with a 9-6 lead, which was soon lost through a pretty good French try. And Ireland never really got a look-in after that. Very nice try by O'Driscoll about 10 mins before full-time. That man is so nimble, jinking here and there; like a rubgy equivalent of Thierry Henry or Diego Maradona in his prime. Shame it was then erased when Ireland were oh-so-careless in their own 22 right at the end, handing the French victory on a plate. Again, Ireland come oh-so-close, only to duff it at the finish.
For once, I'm really hoping that Scotland loses tomorrow to Wales, just so anyone but the glory-two (France/England) wins the 6-nations for once! (Sacré bleu!)