5thPercentile.com

June 22, 2008

My Dinner

Roasted Duck breast and beetroot

Get your hands on some beetroot with fresh greens still attached.

Chop off the greens and discard any that look inedible (ie. too wilted, faded, rotting etc.). Lay them out straight and chop them into inch wide strips. Pop them in a colander and give them a good wash. Salt lightly and put them aside.

Wash and peel the beetroots. Chop them into quarters lengthwise and put them into a roasting dish. Cover liberally with olive and seasame oil, salt and plenty of pepper. Make sure they are well coated.

Chop up two or three (or more - go for it!) large cloves of garlic, rubbing them into the meat of the breast. Salt and pepper the duck breast and place it in the middle of the roasting dish, coating the breast with the excess oil.

Chop up a large tomato into about six pieces - no need to dice. Place it around the meat in the roasting dish.

Wash and salt some mushrooms - as many as you like and whatever type. Some nice varieties here:

Chanterelles

Porcini

Or your more standard white button mushrooms or Shitake. Or just use them all - you can get 'wild' mushroom mixes at most decent supermarkets.

Put the mushrooms in the roasting dish.

Scatter the crushed/chopped garlic over the top of the contents of the roasting dish and salt and pepper the whole lot to taste. You could also add rosemary or herbs of your choice - even a spot of red wine would be good.

Cover the whole dish with tinfoil and pop it into a hot oven for about an hour. After three quarters of an hour take out the dish and check the beetroot. As soon as that is soft you can take the tinfoil off.

Finish the roasting with the tinfoil off for about 15 mins or as long as is required to roast the meat and veggies to taste. Some folks like them cooked, others like them 'caramelised'. It's your dinner, cook it how you like.

When the roasting is nearly finished you are ready to wilt the greens.

Heat a pan and add some coriander seeds. Roast these and crush them in a pestle and mortar.

Add sesame oil to the pan, or some other oil with a good flavour - you could probably even use butter if you want, but I like to do this with the pan very hot so the butter would burn. Again, whatever floats your boat.

Throw the leaves into the pan and season with plenty of pepper and add the ground coriander seeds. Stir the mix around until the leaves wilt.

While you are wilting the leaves you should have enough time to transfer the roasted veggies and meat to a plate.

Bring it all together and server with a nice mustard (goes great with the beetroot greens).

I recommend a cold bottle of Guinness or a fruity red wine to accompany it - but then, I would recommend that for any activity :)

Enjoy! I did!

Posted by dottie at 4:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Twitter - PuppyL0ve

My Otaku senses were tingled by the delightful twitter avatar and her home page. I followed her.

Then one morning I realised she was being followed by thousands.

She was nothing but some 419 scam artists Alice-bot seeded on the inane ramblings of thousands of random samplings from around the net. Besides that avatar picture looked like someone else.

I felt used. I felt dirty.

Now, I don't follow her.

But, there'll always be those hundreds of Twitters she spammed me with...

Posted by dottie at 4:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 16, 2008

2 terror biters on my bed!!

Despite the title it is not

1. Hungarian twins
2. Rabid dogs
3. Hizbollah twix

It is in fact these two puppies

Two feckin' terabytes of storage!!

And all for just 100 each.

Why the hell do I want 1000 GB of storage, let alone 2000?

Paranoia, that's why.

I lost some data years ago from a disk failure. It was painful. Very painful. The only copy of an application that I was going to launch (and it was a very good time to launch that particular app.) was on the drive.

It didn't make it through the crash.

The drives will be popped into a RAID1 configuration, one mirroring the others data - not perfect but not bad.

I bought two 320 GB drives a couple of years ago and filled them in no time at all. I'm sure it will be different this time....

Posted by dottie at 11:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 13, 2008

New Job

I've got a new job! My first real job in 10 years!

It's been a blast and a drag working as a freelancer - mostly a drag though. The stress of looking for work, getting the work sorted out, doing the work and then chasing for money will be mine no more. Plus I get the added bonus of human interaction on a daily basis - I will even be working with women! (My developer friends claim it can't be a serious development house if there are pretty ladies there - they're just jealous...)

However, I will miss being my own boss - taking an extended lunch break if I want, working a month of 12+ hour days so I can take off three weeks for holidays.

Posted by dottie at 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 12, 2008

reprocity.org => Reciprocality.org (sorta)

oh happy day

Posted by dottie at 1:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

reprocity.org

please help!

I'm looking for the site 'reprocity' possibly .org, .net etc.

This was a fantastic site that had some real brain melting ideas regarding thought, mind, learning, life etc.

One of the subjects that was written about was a discussion of the different types of learning methods - mapping and packing.

Packers are people who attempt to stuff their heads full of knowledge, thinking hat if they know enough they will always have the right answer to hand.

Mappers learn a bit about this, a bit about that, but are always mindful of the links between information. Packers learn ever more and have great memories. Mappers learn ever more and have startling insights into the nature of things making intuitive connections between seemingly unrelated areas of knowledge.

No one is a pure mapper or packer.

Another subject tackled on the site was that of 'M0' - a 'disease' of the modern age. This related to the fact that modern times allows us idleness and passiveness to a degree never before attained. The idea is that our brains, when bored, secrete endorphins (or somesuch) giving our brains (not us...) a buzz. We get hooked on this feeling and seek to prolong it by repeating the actions that lead to it in the first place - passivity.

Forty years later we 'wake up' on our couch watching some crap TV; M0 in action. The endorphins make us happy to let our lives drift by.

recrocity.org was a really great site and if anyone knows of it still existing, or where it can be found (the writings that is...) then please, please, let me know.

Update: AHA!!!
reciprocality.org

I wasn't too far off with the URL

Posted by dottie at 12:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 15, 2008

Ubuntu - 9 days to go!

Ubuntu Hardy Heron is nearly ready for serving.

Posted by dottie at 10:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 14, 2008

Twitter - a new way to write?

I have not bought into Twitter.

It is a service for others.

Some people love their Twitter lifestyle.

I do not think I would.

But, I had an epiphany today.

A realisation about Twitter's post philosphy.

Each post must be quite short.

140 characters at most; probably less.

I recalled my favourite Hemingway anecdote.

The apocryphal tale regarding short stories.

Hemingway claimed stories needed few words.

In fact, only six were necessary.

Famously, he wrote the following story.

"baby shoes for sale; never worn"

Fantastic; our minds fill the blanks.

My revelation? Twitter helps channel Hemingway.

This post has many short sentences.

Each sentence is six words exactly.

Could Twitter posts be a novel?

I think they could, with practice.

Each chapter; a single short sentence.

Each sentence; six words in total.

It could be done; it will!

Would any brave soul dare try?

I might, but boasts often fail.

I promise nothing; I procrastinate, often.

But I would love to try.

It is easy to shorten sentences.

Ensuring that each is six words.

But making them sing is difficult.

Do you have what it takes?

Post links for my amusement, please.

Posted by dottie at 8:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

March 9, 2008

Hitler beer!

We were on ski holiday in Livigno recently and spotted the following bottles of wine and beer.

Yes, that is Adolf himself with the phrase 'Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer'.

It's the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. Wandering around a supermarket buying cheap booze and chocolate and then - this.

There were other examples too:

And even more bizarre, bottles depicting Che Guevara

Too weird.

Posted by dottie at 1:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

February 2, 2008

XKCD makes me happy, vodka makes me mean...

I'm so glad that this comic has been on the fron page of del.icio.us for the last few hours.

http://xkcd.com/378/

Posted by dottie at 1:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)