Archive for December, 2016

I have started using the free version of Grammarly to double-check my spelling and grammar. I have the standard spell checker on of course, but Grammary catches some mistakes that the spell checker does not. Here is my invite link if you want to give it ago.

More interesting, is that Grammarly send you a weekly report with some stats in it. I have just received the first one, and it contains some interesting stuff.

• I wrote 2082 words, putting me in the 87th percentile
• I made 16 mistakes, putting me in the 91st percentile
• I used 464 unique words, putting me in the 85th percentile

Whether Grammarly has found some statistical trick to massage my ego, or just has a dubious user base I am not sure. It seems like the kind of tool writers would use, which suggests the former. Still, statistically I seem to be doing okay.

It is also worth noting that I am only using the browser plug-in, so it does not monitor the writing I am doing in desktop applications.

I use Google Analytics to report on most my websites. It is free and they have a lot of Google-only knowledge so it makes sense to make use of them. Recently, I have also started using Google Tags Manager to make things even simpler.

Tags Manager allows you to insert code into your place once, and manage all of your analytics from a central dashboard. So instead of inserting the Google Analytics code into your page, you insert the Google Tags Manager code into your page and then you use Google Tags Manager to add the analytics code in dynamically.

What is the benefit of this? For me personally, the gain is not a huge one. For a marketer, it is a wonder. Previously, they would have to involve a developer every time they wanted to change the tags on a page. This was slow and complicated. I see this process being a problem for a lot of the clients I work with.

However, in my case, I am the developer, so the benefit is less pronounced. Even then though, less messing around with the code can be a welcome feature. Take the Leeds Restaurant Guide for example. I have Google Analytics in there. Then we started running some Facebook Ads for it, so I had to add the Facebook Pixel code in. Then we wanted to track what page features people were interested in, so I had to add some Hotjar code. By this point there are three snippets of JavaScript code in the page.

Using Google Tags Manager means I only need to insert one piece of code and can add and remove these tags without having to do a code release. I can also set up specific triggers for the tags, such as certain URLs, to easily include and exclude tags from different pages.

Last month we tried mincing our own burgers and also tried the prawn cook-off challenge to see if we could tell the difference between fresh and frozen prawns.

What was the natural successor to these two events? A homemade burger challenge of course.

The premise was simple: two cuts, rump and rib eye. Which would produce the best burger?

Let the mincing begin!

The results were good in both cases. Both cuts are fairly fatty when it comes to steak, but the rump produced a slightly fattier burger, making it Elina’s favourite. I preferred the rib eye.

A week later we also tried it with a sirloin. Sirloin is leaner, so produced a more meatier burger.

Buffalo worms are small insects that look like tiny maggots. I know, sounds delicious right? I decided to stir-fry them in a fried rice-style dish: garlic, buffalo worms and prawns to start, then I added rice and peas, and finally an egg.

Here is the finished dish:

Buffalo worms do not have much of a flavour, so it tasted a lot like a regular fried rice with prawns.

One of my favourite ways to cook substantial fish fillets is to dip them in egg, breaded in panko breadcrumbs and then pan fried. This was the plan for a Friday night a few weeks ago when horror of horrors, I realised we had run out of eggs!

Instead, I mixed some soy sauce and runny honey together and used that to bind the breadcrumbs to the fish.

Now, if you are thinking “hmm, wouldn’t that make the fillet taste like the sweetest fish ever?” then you would be right, it does. It was still tasty, but definitely needs something to take some of the sweetness away. I will continue to experiment next time I run out of eggs.