Archive for December, 2013

I bought the HP Laserjet p1102w because it was rated by Which magazine as a best buy. I have no idea how. It is a truly appalling piece of kit.

• After 5 minutes it turns itself off. The documentation claims it goes to sleep, but sending something to print doesn’t wake it up. You have to turn it on by pressing the on button on the printer. Then send something else to print. Then it prints both the original document and the new document.
• The firewire doesn’t work with Mac so you are unable to adjust any of the settings.
• The paper jams frequently.
• There is no “go” button so when you fix the jam the only button you can press is the cancel print button that cancels your job.
• There is only one error light so you have no idea what is wrong.

I’m sending it back and replacing it with a Brother.

Rinsewind. Two Flower. The Counterweight Continent? What more could you really want from a Discworld novel? There was even a Dibbler-style character, not to mention a great horde of rather ageing hero barbarians! Good read.

Hope you all have a great holiday season. If not, at least the days are getting longer now ;).

This could well be a lot less funny to people who haven’t worked in a design agency. But I nearly fell of my chair laughing at the Santa brand book.

Thank you to all you wonderful people that contributed to the Humanist Action Group‘s 2013 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters! As we round things to a close we are pleased to announced so far we have raised in-kind donations worth…

The donations went to three local homeless shelters and will benefit all of their residents. Thanks to your kind contributions a hundred people that would have woken up with nothing over the holidays will now receive much needed food, clothing and toiletries.

You can see all the photos from the event on our Flickr page.

All hail the Christmas Octopus.

I’ve never walked out of a gig before because it was so bad. That is, until I went to see Tenacious D.

The gig was really late. It was billed as starting at 7pm but when I arrived at 8pm the support act was still on and didn’t disappear until 8:25. This meant it was nearly 9pm by the time Tenacious D took to the stage.

The venue certainly didn’t help. Leeds Academy sell more tickets than they actually have seats for on the balcony with the end result being that a lot of people are standing. Because you face down towards the stage, this means if you’re not right at the front you can’t see anything.

I could barely see Jack Black and when I tried to ask the staff where I could actually see the whole stage, which seemed a fair enough question for the £35 I paid, they physically pushed me away and just said “not there”.

Not that it was a specular spectacle to behold anyway. With the description of a stripped-back acoustic session I expected an atmosphere that felt intimate and low-key. What they actually seemed to mean was that Jack and Kyle simply cannot keep up anymore.

Between every song there would be a few minutes of silence while they tried to get their breath back, had a drink and towelled off their sweating faces. No continuation, no stage presence, it could barely be called a show.

After half an hour I just couldn’t take anymore. Heart-breaking.

What do you do when you slow-cooked a pig’s tongue, have some left over sausages and half a jar of Thai cooking sauce left? You make a Thai gumbo…

For those that are interested, here is what I did. To be honest, it’s a lot less clever than it sounds, and it doesn’t sound that clever. But anyway…

I boiled a pig’s tongue the day before to make it really tender. I also pre-cooked two sausages. I then chopped the sausages thinly, cut slash ripped the tongue into pieces and chopped up a shallot and a red pepper too.

Heat some oil in a wok, then throw in the shallots for a minute or two until they cooked. Then put in 3-4 tea spoons of thai cooking sauce and stir it all together for another minute or two.

Finally throw in the meat and the red pepper along with 400ml of coconut milk, bring it to boil and then let it simmer for a few minutes, just until it gets up to temperature basically.

Last month I went to see Nickelback in Leeds. It was the first time I had been to the Leeds Arena. It was pretty good. Nothing amazing, but it is quite a nice layout.

Nickelback were entertaining live. They weren’t a band where you come away from the show thinking “that was absolutely amazing”, but they were a lot of fun on stage and far less serious than I imagined them to be.

I didn’t get any good photos.

I did finally get a chance to use my massive goth boots to see over everyone’s heads though. Well worth the investment!

We might not have a bed, but at least we have a good doormat.