Chris Worfolk's Blog

We have previously had a good experience at Roast and Conch, the Hotel Chocolate, Leeds restaurant. Unfortunately, at a recent visit for my sister’s birthday, it failed to live up to its prior reputation.

Service was slow, especially drinks, which were repeatedly forgotten.

My starter, fried whitebait, was well-cooked but needed more sauce. My main, a burger, needed more seasoning. It was cooked all the way through, despite me asking for medium-well. The bun was toasted so much that it had dried out and become crispy. The chips could have done with longer in the deep-frier.

Dessert was a little better, as you would expect from a chocolate shop, but there was simply too much of it. Portion sizing seemed to be an issue in multiple places. Both mine and Elina’s starters were large, whereas Elina’s main was tiny, and really could have done with a side being suggested.

The hot chocolate was nice. However, we asked for the whipped cream on the top, which, when you punched through to the drink, overflowed. This would not have been so bad if the cup had been served on a saucer, or had a handle, but it came with neither.

To finish things off: a fire alarm. Not a quick burst that was easily turned off. It rang from the moment we asked for the bill to the moment we were walking out of the restaurant. You would think that staff would clarify to people whether they should evacuate or not, but such a courtesy was not extended to many patrons.

Definitely not a good evening for Roast and Conch.

Last week we had a family trip to Tropical World in Leeds. It was a pretty poor experience.

We started off trying to buy lunch at the Roundhay Fox. They said no. Apparently they do not serve bar food on a Saturday lunch time. This turned out to be a piece of luck though. We headed up the road to the Deer Park, who were willing to sell us some food. They have really upped their game: my pork belly and scallops was a massive winner.

Tropical World was somewhat disappointing too. They are currently renovating, which means that some of the exhibits are closed. This includes the best ones: the waterfall, the terrapins, the snakes. They are still charging full price for this reduced experience.

They are giving you a free hot drink in the cafe, but that only lasts until 3:30pm, and we finished at 3:40pm. Boo.

At least we did get to put some coins in Ollie the Octopus. Elina laughed at me when I did the entire Ollie speech before we got there. And again when she heard it in person. He also now has a cousin called Rodriguez, in the South America section, which we are pretty sure is racist because nobosy was called Rodriguez back when the Mayan civilisation was going strong.

At the end of November, Venla met her other grandmother for the first time.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, this week was the week that Venla decided to start poohing on everybody. I do not think that dented Riitta’s enjoyment of the week too much though.

The worst name of a lift manufacturing company is owned by the good people of ANSA Elevators Ltd. It may well mean something in English, but ansa means something in Finnish too. That meaning is trap.

However, a close second has to be the company that installed the lift at The Core shopping centre in Leeds.

I mean come on, Schindler’s lift?

Finland has a lift manufacturing company, and it is a big one. They are called Kone and you have probably been up or down one of their escalators. Their name means machine in Finnish. Perhaps it is their quality products that make them successful, but it could also be because they have avoided references to being trapped, or racial persecution, in the name of their company.

Finnish Christmas Carols are held in Leeds every year, on the last Saturday in November. Lutheranism is the main brand of Christianity in Finland so appropriately, it is held in St. Luke’s Lutheran church in Headingley. The same venue as the Finnish [language] Saturday school takes place.

This is the first year that we took Venla (obviously). Did she enjoy it? Who knows, because she slept through the entire thing.

Despite the fact that she was sleeping for most of it, she did dance along to the children’s song. I was not going to let her miss that, unconscious or not.

There is always a bring-and-share supper after the service. We brought cake. This year it featured a lot of people looking at our baby and saying things like “that is a nice baby”. Or, commonly, “that is a very calm baby you have there.” Because, like all babies, she is remarkably calm when other people are around, saving all the crying up for when she gets home.

Unfortunately, I was from singing along for the same reason as last year: my Finnish is not good enough, nor is my knowledge of English carols.

Crazy Talk would be an amazing name for a podcast about mental health. Sadly, I have not given my new podcast such a name. But I have launched one, and it is all about anxiety.

Earlier this month, I got down to some serious writing for the Worfolk Anxiety blog. Feedback has been better than I expected: the blog experiences an above-average bounce rate. This means that when people click on the link to the blog post, they actually read it. Sounds strange that that would be a thing, but it is actually super-common on the internet for people to click a link and never read the article they clicked on.

By the way, if you want to get updates from the blog, we have a MailChimp list you can subscribe to. It’s free, and there are goodies for signing up.

Alongside this, I am launching the Worfolk Anxiety Podcast. This will also feature advice and inspiration for controlling your anxiety and enjoying life more. The first three episodes are already available, and you can keep up-to-date with future episodes using your favourite podcasting app.

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.