christopher-hill.com

Twitter

I've just Twittered to my blog using Jabber via GChat. If you don't know what that means, then frankly you're not one of the cool kids.

Friday, October 27, 2006 1:30 PM 2 comments

Ba B-Baaaaaaa......

......Ba B-Ba B-Ba B-Baaaaaaa

Thursday, October 26, 2006 9:14 PM 1 comments

Online Postage

Right, thought I'd bung up a quick post about the Royal Mail's online postage, now that I've used it a few times. In the whole, it's a useful service - with caveats.
Good things:
- As long as you have plenty of stick on labels, you won't have the annoying thing of needing to post something then realising that you've got no stamps and have to trudge down to the Post Office or Smiths or somewhere.
- If you've got a non-standard packet or package (yes, there's a difference) you don't have to go to the Post Office to get it weighed and that, you can do it all yourself.
- The fact that the validated address is being printed out in a format they dictate means that you are increasing the chances that your mail will be delivered quickly and correctly, as it is more likely to whiz through their automatic scanning gubbins that they have (I've worked in a sorting office, I know what I'm talking about here).
Bad things:
- If you buy something with Special Delivery postage, you still have to traipse down to the Post Office to hand it over (they don't tell you this until after you've bought it) and when you get there they don't know what to do with it. There really is no point buying Special Delivery online.
- There is a bug which means that the town of the delivery address always gets added to the town of the return address, e.g. I just sent a birthday card to my cousin in Soham, and my return address showed as "Soham, Sheffield".
- For some reason it didn't print quite right on my Mac/HP printer at home, but might just have been a setup problem as the ones I printed at work were fine.
So there you go, useful in some situations, not in others. Like most things in life.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 7:41 PM 3 comments

Paint.NET

At work a couple of months back I was having a good old moan about the fact that there wasn't a decent free image editor available for the PC. "The Gimp" went up the cry and I installed it and it was seven kinds of balls. I hate hate hate hated it. Maybe it is because I'm a Photoshop user and just couldn't get my head around a completely different way of working. Either way it was so unintuitive that I couldn't complete the simplest of tasks with it. "Don't worry" someone said, "there's a version that re-does the interface to make it like Photoshop!" Brilliant, I thought, that's exactly what I need and I installed it and I saw that it was rubbish. It was about as much like Photoshop as a piece of shit, which is coincidentally what it was. People came across to my desk to offer advice about what I was doing wrong, and then went away as mystified as me as to why it was such a fucking piece of shit. Various other options were suggested but none cut the mustard. So, for the last few months I've been using MS Paint. Yes, that's right, that MS Paint.
So, I was delighted today when Tony forwarded me a link to Paint.NET. It is Windows only, but it WORKS! It is INTUITIVE! It has a PHOTOSHOP LIKE INTERFACE! It has LAYERS! It is ultra FAST! Did I mention that it WORKS?! Brilliant. I've not used even all the functionality by any stretch, but I tell you this, I didn't once have to shout "Why the fuck don't you just work you cocking piece of wanking shit!??" like I did with Gimp. I didn't have to be physically restrained to stop me smashing up my computer and chucking the monitor through the window like I did with the Gimp (nearly). It just god damn worked. Why can't all software be like that? ANSWER ME THAT...

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 7:59 PM 2 comments

Noel Edmonds - What a Stupid Fucking Prick

"Les Dennis can have the big Winnebago when he gets the ratings we get," Noel says.. What a stupid fetid talentless wank face he is.

Monday, October 23, 2006 1:59 PM 3 comments

XP on a MacBook

Phew. I've spent most of today trying to get XP installed on my MacBook, and have finally done it. Once you've partitioned the hard drive it is a breeze. Once you've partitioned the hard drive. It kept telling me that it couldn't move some files, and that to solve this I needed to reformat the drive as a Mac OS X Extended (journalled) drive. Which is fine except that it already was a Mac OS X Extended (journalled) drive.
In the end, the following worked:
- Create a bootable backup of the Mac incase it all went the way of the pear.
- Remove all large files and applications (including a "sleep" image that was sat on my drive). This was made easier by the free tool "Disk Inventory X", a great tool allowing you to visually analyze the contents of the drive.
- Use the Mac's Disk Utility to delete free space.
- Use another free program - Onyx - to optimize the system and carry out certain maintenance tasks.
Finally, with 60 gigs free disc space, it allowed me to create a 5 gig partition for Windows and I was away. I wonder if I'll ever use it.

Sunday, October 22, 2006 5:54 PM 0 comments

Boys Toys

Phil recently bought an rc helicopter for the office. It is pretty cool, especially as it only cost £30. Tim followed suit, natch. Christian has stated that if they enter his air space, he'll shoot them down with his USB missile launcher.

Saturday, October 21, 2006 1:22 PM 0 comments

BE AFRAID

The following headline caught my eye as I loaded up Google News today:
Dirty bomb a new fear as missile threat fades
The article reads "The west coast of America is not under any danger from a North Korean nuclear missle strike, but don't worry you are still fucked. Because it is likely, no, it is extremely fucking probable, that you will be KILLED or SERIOUSLY WOUNDED by some kind of dirty bomb that evil terrorists will try and smuggle out of North Korea because they HATE FREEDOM SO VERY MUCH."
OK, I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist. I'm not sure I completely understand this need Americans have to be terrified all the time. It's not just the news media that is feeding this need for fear, it is cinema too. Last night I watched The Hostel which was basically about Americans going out in to the big wide world (Europe) and being tortured for fun. It featured torture scenes that were just absurd and over the top and were basically as terrible as anything that could be conceived. Then I went to the cinema today and trailer after trailer promoted horror movies such as Saw III, which is also basically a film about people being tortured, for fun.
It will take someone more erudite than me to make sense of the pyschology at play here, but I think Freud would have called it a kind of "compulsive repetition" - that is, in order to come to terms with past and current events (9/11, Abu Graib, the Iraq War), and to prepare themselves pyschologically for possible future similar events, the population are constantly playing out their fears. If you accept the premise that dreams are basically a by product of your mind trying to make sense of what is going on in your world (and in your head), isn't it reasonably clear that cinema is also taking on this role too?
That's not an original theory of course, it has long been said that all the horror movies featuring invasion from out of space in the fifties were basically reflecting American society's fear of Communist invasion at that time. But instead of little green men with lasors, we now have masked men with drills and blow torches and chain saws. It's all a bit grim really.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 5:24 PM 1 comments

Somethings

Something I've bought today: A DVD Recorder from Richer Sounds. It was the cheapest they had, but it is still really good and does everything I need. Finally I can archive stuff off of my PVR.
Something I've done today: Put my first Ebay auction online, a DVD of Beethoven's Fidelio.
Something I've learnt today: You can buy stamps online and print them out yourself. Which is actually quite useful to know when you've just started created your first of many ebay auctions.

Monday, October 16, 2006 10:13 PM 0 comments

Risotto

Time for another risotto post. I've been doing a lot more R&D on risotto skills over the last couple months, as the high you get when you chow down on a perfect risotto is a joy unlike any other. It's like injecting serotonin straight into brain jelly. Now, know this. Most of the risotto recipes you read in cook books and magazines are inadequate and many of them will just give you completely the wrong idea about what is involved in making a risotto. Sure, you can break the rules, but only if you've mastered the basics and completely understand what it is you're doing.
I was going to post a recipe for a particular type of risotto, but I thought a better thing would be to post the basic formula and then add a note at the end explaining the different variations that are possible.
So, here is my hopefully relatively agnostic guide to making a plain risotto. Actually, I say this is a basic plain risotto recipe, but note that the addition of white wine is technically speaking optional, as is the truffle oil. And I've used shallots instead of onions. See, even with a basic plain risotto, there's so many options available which is probably why there's so much conflicting advise out there.

First - assemble the ingredients. It's always good practise to set out all the ingredients first, as it's truly annoying to get to the last few moments and realising you've not got any Paramsan or something. Here are the ingredients for a good plain risotto:
Risotto Rice. There's actually a number of different varieties of Risotto Rice. The stuff you get in the supermarket is most likely going to be Arborio rice, and it's absolutely fine, especially for beginners, giving consistently good results. However, for a risotto that is more satisfying and also more authentic, it's worth using Carnaroli rice. This rice will soak up and hold all the flavours of your risotto, and the starch that produces that wonderful creamy texture has a high amylose content which also helps the rice hold a certain firmness. If you don't live in London or Edinburgh you'll probably only be able to find it online. Stockists include Carluccios which is a fantastic Italian deli on Neil Street, Covent Garden which fortunately has an online store. Vialone Nano rice is suppose to be good too, but I've never used it, so don't really know. As a rough guide, 100 grams of rice per person should suffice.
Vegetable Stock. It is important to use homemade stock. If you don't, your risotto will be OK, but it is so easy to elevate it beyond OK by using proper stock. If that sounds like a lot of effort, believe me it isn't. It's fine to freeze the stuff, so really it's just a case of once every two or three months assembling all the ingredients, getting a big pot, bunging the ingredients in, and leaving to simmer away. The reason the stock is important is that the rice will be soaking it all up and holding its flavour, so the better the stock, the better the risotto. Here's a recipe for 2 pints of vegetable stock that has served me well:
4 shallots - halved
2 celery sticks
2 chopped carrots
3 halved tomatoes
3 fresh parsely stalks
1 sprig of fresh tarragon
1 sprig of fresh thyme
1 inch piece of pared orange rind
6 peppercorns
2.5 pints of water
- Put all the above in a large saucepan.
- Bring to boil then lower to simmer for 30 minutes.
- Leave to cool completely.
- Strain through a seive.
I reckon that for a decent risotto you need no more than 1 pint of stock per 100 grams of rice.
Shallots or Onions. Most recipes ask for onions, but personally I prefer shallots. They are milder than onions and add just a slight Gallic touch to the risotto which is no bad thing really. One small shallot or onion per 100g rice is about right I reckon.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Butter
Parmesan Cheese
White Wine
Truffle Oil - Man, this stuff is just wonderful. Just the smell of it alone is addictive. I'm sure part of the reason I love making risotto is for the final few moments where I get to drizzle a tiny amount of the stuff over the dish and that pungent aroma hits the nostrils releasing a rush of endorphins. Note that the name is slightly misleading, it is actually olive oil that has been infused with white truffles, not oil that has been extracted from truffles. When you see the stuff in a supermarket, it looks on the face of it quite expensive compared to the other oils. The thing is, it's not an accurate comparison to compare the cost of it with say Olive Oil. You don't cook stuff in truffle oil, you just use a tiny amount of it as a flavouring, and therefore a small 100ml bottle should last a good few weeks even if used regularly. I've found that the cap of a 100ml bottle makes a good measuring device. One capful per serving seems to be about right.

OK, that's all the ingredients. The next step is to make the thing.

The first step, as it is with many Italian dishes including Spag Bol, is the Soffrito stage, which basically means "to fry gently". Basically you fry the shallots to soften them. You could add extra ingredients at this stage, and I'm sure many Italians would according to whatever recipe their mother's taught them, but for a simple risotto it is really not necessary. For the soffrito stage, you can use butter or olive oil. I actually use a combination of the two. I like the richness of the butter, but the olive oil helps prevents it from burning by raising it's smoking point.
So, finely dice the shallots and get a heavy cast iron saute pan (this will disperse the heat evenly) on a high heat. Pour in the olive oil and when hot, add a knob of butter. When the butter's fizzing dies down add the shallots and give a quick stir with a wooden spoon whilst immediately reducing the heat to a medium high. Keep moving the shallots about, you want to soften them making sure you don't to brown them.

Next comes the tostatura (toasting) stage where you heat the rice in the soffrito. Toasting is really a misnomer as that is the very last thing you want to do to the rice. You basically just need to add the rice and quickly and evenly stir it into the soffrito coating all the grains.

Next is the cottura (cooking) phase. You could also call it the meditation phase, as the slow hypnotic stirring of the rice basically empties you brain of all thoughts, and so is a great way to unwind after a busy day.
I actually kick this off but adding a splash of white wine just to give the dish a bit of something else - you just add the wine, not enough to drown the rice, and stir until absorbed/reduced. Then you just add the stock one ladel at a time and stir constantly, only adding another ladel when the previous has been absorbed. For the first 15 minutes, you don't need to think at all, just make sure it is all being cooked evenly. After 15 minutes you need to start keeping an eye on things to try and judge when you've reached the All’onda phase.

The All’onda phase is where the rice is slightly al dente, meaning that the very centre of each grain has a "little bite". In theory the rice should be translucent and so you can see a tiny white centre but in practise this isn't always possible due to whatever ingredients you've used literally colouring your judgment. I usually just cheat and pick out a grain and eat it. This not only tells you for sure whether it's al dente, but with experience will give you an indication of how much longer is left.

So with the rice al dente you enter the Mantecare stage. Stir in another knob of butter per 100 grams rice which brings out the creaminess. Then taste it and adjust the seasoning accordingly. I do this after adding the butter as butter typically has a certain amount of salt content. I then remove the heat and stir in some grated Paramesan which gives a bit of consistency to the risotto. I then leave to rest in the pan for five mintes. When it sits like this the rice basically makes the leap from al dente to perfectly cooked. It also gives you time to heat the plates. To serve, simply drizzle over a small amount of truffle oil. I sometimes add a few parmesan shavings too.

The eat and go "Oh my fucking god this is the most fucking incredible risotto I've ever fucking eaten. Jesus. Fucking Hell. Man. This is so fucking good. I didn't know food could be like this."

So, that's the basic risotto. The thing is, you'll never actually just eat a basic risotto, you will always augment it with other ingredients. Here are some suggestions:

Mushroom risotto. My current favourite. You can use any mushrooms, but it goes without saying that the better the mushrooms the better the dish. I will generally use wild mushrooms, they are currently plentiful. I found out yesterday that there is currently a big glut of fresh Porcini mushrooms, so it's a great time to take advantage of that. Add the mushrooms in between the soffrito and the tostatura phase.

Cheese. I generally find four cheese risotto too rich. I always feel like I should have an ambulance on standby just in case. The cheese needs adding roughly three quarters of the way through cooking.

Fish/Shellfish. I've not made many risottos with the seafood actually in the risotto, just prawns if I recall. It was OK but nothing special. What I've found more successful it to pan fry a fillet while a plain risotto is resting, and then use the risotto as a bed for the fish. Try this: plain risotto with a pan fried swordfish stake, drizzled with a sherry vinaigrette (1 part dijon mustard, 6 parts sherry vinegar, 18 parts walnut oil).

Vegetables. It really depends how much cooking is required as to when you add vegetables. Some, you just stir in at the end, others go in with soffrito. Sometimes, I like to grill or gently fry larger veg like aubergine or courgette and just use them as a base for the risotto.

Meat. Apparently, if you want a meat risotto, you should add it at the soffrito stage. Not that I've ever tried obviously.

Saturday, October 14, 2006 6:55 PM 4 comments

Aviemore, Not

So, Scotland is off. First there was supposed to be a big group going, which was whittled down to just five. One of them dropped out a couple of weeks back and last night Dave and Amy decided they were too ill to travel. So me and Conrad decided that it was silly just the two of us going up there, especially as it'd only be him running. So I'm back in Sheffield and not sure what to do with myself now. I think I may just lounge around doing bugger all, but I'm not sure I can even be bothered to do nothing.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to Bradford or Barnsley (or somewhere else begginning with B, I can't actually remember) to see Rach's choir in action and to catch up with Nick, which will be good. Monday, meh, I might go to work, we'll see.

11:42 AM 0 comments

Culture, yeah?

Opera and Ballet in London on successive nights. Been to the opera loads of times and I know I like it. Ballet on the other hand was a bit of a gamble.
I've always had the rather prejudiced view that ballet is nothing but a load of prancing about on stage. Now, having seen a Royal Ballet triple bill, I can say with authority that it is only about 90% prancing about. 10% of the time is set aside for non-prancing activities and at times that 10% was quite expressive and interesting. But then they'd start prancing again. I didn't get. I just sat there wanting to shout out "Why the prancing? What does it all mean???" But I don't think it meant anything, it's just what they do.
Oh well, I guess ballet just isn't for me. Everyone else there seemed to think it was the best thing ever. I'd like to see Rite of Spring still though. It is a much more ritualistic visceral piece, and in fact it was seeing an opera with some ritualistic modern dance in it that made me think I might like the ballet in general. But alas no. Maybe I just need to read up a bit about it, maybe I literally just didn't get it.
The opera on the other - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - was absolutely brilliant. Thrilling, even. Brilliant music, fantastic cast, superb staging, it had everything that can be good about opera, and none of what is often so bad. It's being filmed tonight for broadcast on 11th November. Those of you that have expressed to me an interest in opera should watch it, whether you were just humouring me or not! It is great fun.

11:28 AM 0 comments

Genius, innit

I was wondering the other day what would have happened had Mozart been born in the 1980s. I can't remember why I was wondering that, I just was, OK? The thing is, Mozart was supposed to be this musically prodigious kid that was shitting out sonatas and puking up concertos at the age of five. I was trying to conceive of what the outcome would be like if someone like that were born today.

For one, the composition of "classical music" is a moribund art form. There's very few people writing "classical music" today, and those that do usually produce a cacophony of sound that is the aural equivalent of being shot out of a canon into a concrete wall and then being vomited on. It isn't pretty and it isn't pleasant. So maybe, I thought to myself, maybe the Mozart of today is actually churning out more culturally contemporary music. Maybe in a bedroom in Basildon there's a five year old kid composing the most intricate and careful constructed Death Metal ever conceived by a child. Maybe in two hundred years time, scholars will pour over works like "Deicide Deceiver" and "God Hates You, You Cunt" and start droning on in prosaic tones about what a genius little Jonny Basildon was to have come up with such master works at the age of five.

See, the thing is, if you were at school today with a kid who was composing concertos during break time, you'd bully him. Everyone would. Any creative spark would be pummelled out of existence by his peers in no time at all. I knew people at school who were highly musically talented and they would compose classical music for fun and they were twats. I look back now and my only regret is that I didn't bully them, because they clearly deserved it. What benefit did they think composing derivative works in a style that went out of fashion several hundred years ago bring the world? None benefit - that's what.

So, it was with great interest this morning that as I lay in bed I heard a piece on the Today programme about this very subject. There is a fifteen year old child - Jay Greenberg - who has recently completed his fifth symphony. It is currently being recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road studios. He is a genius in the mold¹ of Mozart. His elders bang on about how wonderful it is to have a child that at the age of 11 was creating sonatas in the style of Beethoven. Fortunately "Bluejay", as he is apparently known, sees things differently. He is a genius at everything he turns his hand to, and so doesn't quite understand why he should be expected to remain in a moribund art form for the rest of his career. Even if he does stay in the music world, he wants to focus his efforts on pushing the boundaries of more contemporary forms. His tutors bemoan this aspiration, but I hope the kid stands firm. Why on earth do we need another Mozart? I'll be honest, I can't stand the music of the original Mozart (with the possible exception of his Requiem), I could do without a Mozart derivative and so could practically everyone else on this planet.
I wonder if he's ever considered Death Metal.

1 - accidental spelling mistake, but seems somehow appropriate.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006 5:29 PM 4 comments

Aviemore None Marathon

I've had to pull out of the Aviemore Half Marathon due to a continuing niggle with my ankle. What it needs it a steady increase in running activity. What it doesn't need it me thinking that I can just get up and train for a half marathon in two weeks, and that is precisely what it told me, in niggle form.
Conrad "Camp Superman" Hodge has taken my place. He was going with us to Aviemore anyway but had forgotten to actually enter the race, so it all works out in the end, do'n'tit. I'll still be going up to Scotland though. It's been literally hours since my last mini-break and I'm feeling the strain already. I need a break dammit.

Monday, October 09, 2006 6:33 PM 0 comments

Blackpool - Capital of Culture

Hotel Proprietor: Someone's birthday is it?
Me: No, just a bunch of mates from work.
Proprietor: Do you know Blackpool at all?
Me: Not really, I came once 20 years ago...
Proprietor: [shrugs] - It asn't changed.

Went to Blackpool this weekend for shits and giggles. Blackpool is a classy place, don't let anyone tell you otherwise! We went on quite a few rides at the Pleasure Beach. The good thing about that place is that you are allowed to go on rides when you're drunk, and so I managed one ride that I'd never contemplate when sober. We had to go back there the following morning as The Big One wasn't running on Saturday due to heavy wind (hangovers be damned). The Big one is a massive 220 foot high coaster. I don't do heights, and was a bit weary, but it was really worth it, a great buzz.

Pictures here.

UPDATE - Riley took some video. Here's the "Ice Blast" which is the one which I would never have done sober...

And here's us hurtling round the park on "The Big One"...

Sunday, October 08, 2006 7:19 PM 0 comments

Spiral Slide

When I have a bigger house, I'm going to have one of these installed.

Sunday, October 01, 2006 7:55 PM 0 comments