Went to the theatre for the first time in ages, to see Mike Leigh’s
2000 Years. I’ve not been to the Royal Theatre in Newcastle before —
it’s quite an impressive building but the seats are uncomfortable and
the acoustics aren’t great.
The play was good. The father was great, being a crotchity old man of
the type that I hope to grow old to be. It was rather like his
earlier films; lots of middle class people, all of whom seem to have
developed a particularly good line in witty repartee for no adequately
explained reason.
But you can forgive anybody who can finish a play discussing the
political situation Israel, with a bad pun about Noah.
Originally published on my old blog site.
Today, I tried some bulgar wheat which I haven’t cooked with for
several years. I think it was fairly succesful.
Ingredients
1/2 Red Onion
Large Handful Bulgar Wheat
Spices
Garlic Puree
Dark Soy Sauce
MSG
Rice Vinegar
Chilli Sauce
Pepper
Veggie Oxo cube
Preparation
Fry red onion, with some garlic and pepper and the Oxo cube in a small
pan, with olive oil. When half done add decent splosh of soy. Wait
till the soy starts to brown somewhat. Add the vinegar to shift the
soy stuck to the pan. Wait till most of the vinegar has evaporated
off, then ad the bulgar wheat, followed by a cup of water, put a lid
on and simmer.
The wheat takes about 10 minutes to cook, after which most of the
water is poured off, leaving enough to keep it moist. Then, it’s
served and garnished with …
Watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s today. It was great. It only feels a
little aged, mostly in the styles and some of the attitudes, but the
core of it remains. Audrey Hepburn is stunning and George Peppard
endearing — you want him to succeed — although you keep expecting
him to pull out a cigar, smirk at the camera and say "I love it when a
plan comes together".
As it happens, he gets the girl, so I guess it does.
Originally published on my old blog site.
Was at a workshop on Semantic Enrichment of the Literature. There were
a combination of text miners, ontologists and publishers. It was a
pretty interesting meeting; however, there was a lack of
coherence. The problem is, at the moment, there are too many
interacting possibilities of the way scientific publishing could
develop, and too many requirements. The big issues that I can see are:
Electronic Publishing
High Throughput
Open Access
Electronic publishing give us enormous possibilities, of which we
have barely touched the surface. Should we go "wiki", should we enable
annotation of papers after publication, and, if so, how do we maintain
the provenance the literature curation that we have at the moment.
High throughput means that we are suffering from a — data del…
Today, I was in Stanstead Airport after a workshop at Hinxton. One
thing which caught my eye was their heavy-duty, hot-air,
hand-dryers. Or caught my ear, as there were really pretty loud. They
work in much the normal way — they blow hot air — but much more
powerfully than normal; you could see the air stretching the skin over
the bones.
The main reason thing that I noticed was the stickers on them saying
that they used 80% less energy than normal dryers. Slightly ironic
really that an airport, which has 100 ton hair dryer landing every
five minutes, should worry about energy efficiency.
Originally published on my old blog site.