Hi. I still use LJ, follow my friends and similar, but I've moved my main host to Dreamwidth now, and am crossposting everything to here, but asking people to comment there.

Mat Bowles.

It's still fully interoperative, the OpenID comment functions there are good and improving, and I can follow everything from both sites easily.

OK, miss_s_b cooked us a lovely veggie cottage pie this evening, with cheap garlic bread using a baguette from Tesco's bargain bin.

So I need to cook pudding after Shrub's gone to bed. I've done loads of steam puddings recently, as well as cookies, muffins, biscuits and bread variants (recipes might get posted on request, I still have the bread recipe in drafts somewhere). So...

Any suggestions?

Preferably not involving nuts (because I'm allergic) or chocolate (as Jennie's allergic). Stuff involving syrup or jam is an added bonus but not essential.

So, today was the 2nd annual visit of the parents. They do a lot of weekends away, spent last weekend in Cheshire at an event and have an event next weekend in North Yorkshire, so they come to visit us today and tomorrow.

So we have an attack of planned vs actual.

( So, about that late afternoon arrival time... )

( My Mum orders a 'snack' lunch for us... )

( A damn fine evening meal, only slightly spoiled by not having enough space left in our bellies... )

Tomorrow? We might go to Holmfirth. We might go to Wakefield for the National Sculpture Park (if only just to annoy Germaine "call me Professor" Greer). Don't know yet. I do know it requires us meeting my parents and the ungodly early hour of 10am. Wish us luck.

This entry was originally posted at http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/363225.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Spent the last weekend at the spring Liberal Democrat conference just up the road in Harrogate. It's one of those events that holds a soft spot for me—my first one was 2 years ago, just 2 weeks after I'd met Jennie, so I spent both evenings with her in Leeds—we both think we'd have ended up together regardless, but the ability to meet up in Yorkshire really did speed things up. Anyway, it was a damn good weekend.
( Met Howard Dean )
( Official Voting Member—the POWER )
( Faith Schools—they're WRONG, damnit! )
If, like me, you want to see the end of faith schools, take heart from this policy, it's a damn fine step in the right direction, and much better than what any party had before. If you think they're a good idea? I refer you to the words of the Accord chair, Rabbi Jonathan Romain:

I want my children to go to a school when they can sit next to a Christian, play football in the break with a Muslim, do homework with a Hindu and walk back with an atheist - interacting with them and them getting to know what a Jewish child is like. Schools should build bridges, not erect barriers

Amen to that.

G'night all. Gotta take the Shrub to school in the morning, and Jennie's getting an 8am train back.

On Monday evening. Jennie did, with a fair bit of help from Shrub and me, bake cupcakes. A sign that I'm getting naturalised is I'm now in the habit of calling them buns (mostly, admittedly, because Shrub gets confused otherwise). SB was in charge on Monday, because I'd not baked cakes for years (and years and years), and simply lack confidence in the kitchen.

It's not that I can't cook (granddad was a chef, I grew up around farms), more that, generally, I couldn't be arsed. But, y'know, I do enjoy cooking, so I'm trying to build my confidence up.

I learnt how not to do it

Anyway. I learnt lots on Monday. Specifically, I learnt how not to do it, and that, if in doubt, use less mix in the bun case, not more, which was SBs preference.

So, with us having eaten them all by this evening, I decided to cook some more up. Theoretically SB was going to be in the room with me making sure I didn't mess up, but that would've meant getting out of bed and that just wasn't going to happen.

I quartered the recipe

Given that we'd a) made far too many and b) they'd all overflowed the cases on Monday, we decided to quarter the recipe to make just 12 (ie one tins worth). So, from memory, I quartered the recipe.

Except that I mixed up the cake recipe and the bread recipe. So when I quartered a 800g of flour and weighed out 200g, I was actually measuring out the exact same amount of flour as we used on Monday.

Ah well. We now have a nice sponge cake as well as 126 cupcakes. I did cook 12, but, y'know, they were fresh and looked tempting. Shrub likes them too.

The sponge cake is still cooling, SB's made some buttercream icing to use as a filler, some of which is already on the buns.

Eat the mistakes

This cooking larks a lot easier than some people make it out to be y'know. As long as, y'know, you're prepared to eat the mistakes.

Nom nom nom.

So, most of you will have noticed that since moving in with Miss Spammy Pants I'm posting a lot less, but she's still posting lots. Now, of course, any good blogger gives away a fair bit of themselves in the persona that they blog with, but it's not the whole picture. So I thought some of you might like to know other aspects of what she's like.

Well, those of you that know me know that, well, mornings? Not really my thing. At all. Never thought I'd ever meet someone palpably worse than me. Until I moved in with her.

( She's worse than me. Really, lots lots worse )

Love you darlin.

I don't play MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. I try to avoid buying too many computer games, especially new ones, as I know what I'm like. Up until now though, I had no idea that Jennie was, in actualy fact, worse than me in this regard as well. She's hidden it well.

Those of you that read miss_s_b or theyorkshergob might be wondering if her silence today is due to hangover or similar from her birthday yesterday. You might suspect she's recovering. Well, she is, sort of.

She's sat on the sofa. Playing Speed Racer on the Wii. She's been there pretty much non-stop except for food breaks. Since 4pm today. 9^1/2hrs and counting.

It's a fun game, with lots of little tricks to learn. But she's way way past the "I want to be able to teach shrublette how to play this" stage.

Doesn't bother me of course, I've been distracted for more than a few hours by Oolite since I started playing it in November. But I don't recall an 8 hour straight game. Meh, I've turned the TV volume down and crawled into bed, I have books to read and candles to read them by--if she doesn't come upstairs until the morning that's her call.

Visitors tomorrow, innerbrat and ms_ntropy are braving the Megabus from The Smoke. So she'll teach them how to play it tomorrow evening I've no doubt.

This is a pretty good description of my friends list and feed reader this morning:

How about you? Taking Jennie to work for an eight hour shift in abit, then back here—got a bit of a grotty cold so don't want to sit in the pub given we're doing that tomorrow for her birthday anyway. So, come on people, post stuff, amuse me!

OK, how about a meme. Um, Most expensive Xmas present? Most annoying? Most useful? Why?

For me, all three are one. We got a Wii. Well, when I say we, what I mean is Jennie got one and I grudgingly said OK. Obviously most expensive, and obviously, it's a Wii, it's annoying. But most useful?

Can we say babysitting service? Shrub's got the idea I'm completely useless at it already, so accepts that I don't want to play it lots. So as long as I make sure she takes regular breaks and go down to talk to her a bit, I can keep my sanity when she's off school. Yay!

Also? Worms: Space Oddity is cool, even if I can't aim for toffee, and it makes Jennie smile. Making Jennie smile is always fun.

I think the The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy answered this best back in 1992:

Although it's not exactly new. And possibly it's being replaced by t'internet. Which, y'know, given the events of this week, is probably a good thing. On that subject...

URL of the week:

http://change.gov/ (via)

I have a brief comment on the Obama election. It's a story about a man who captured the hopes of the nation, made an appeal for change, won an election by mobilising a massive coalition of disparate influence groups, uniting them for a common purpose who went on to win seats all over the country, including in places that were previously thought unwinnable for his party. A lawyer, he and his young family were a refreshing alternative to the tired right wing Govt that they voted out.

Mr President Elect Obama sir? If you turn into another fucking Tony Blair, the entire world will be very disappointed in you. I voted for that git, I supported that git. He broke his promises and let me down. Don't be a git sir, we're depending on you.

Domestic bliss?

This morning, miss_s_b did take young shrublette to school, then went into town and did some shopping in Tesco. She bought a loaf of bread, more classic Doctor Who poseable action figure (we're very close to getting the whole Robot now, yay!) and a big bag of five custard doughnuts. I then took her to work. At lunch today, I did eat one of the doughnuts and felt a bit guilty about it. This evening, I picked her up from work, we went to former Cllr Yates's house to get his name at the top of our petition, then I dropped her home so I could go back to her work to pick up her Dad and give him a lift home.

When I got home, I offered to make tea. Quoth she:

I'm not hungry actually. I've eaten all the doughnuts

She has as well, the greedy pig.

Next time she complains about putting on weight? Suggest she might like to stop eating all the doughnuts...

Love you darlin'

Righty ho landlubbers. After decamping to Bournemouth for a week, we've ended up down in Devon as a) it's just down the road and b) my cousin's getting married Saturday.

This is good, especially as it means I get to go see The Pyrates again. Yup, on International Talk like a Pirate day, my mates Tim and David have booked their band a gig (I last saw them just after I moved to London last year and enjoyed the night).

So, SB and I are planning to travel up to Exeter tomorrow (partially as there's a co-op branch to pay some cheques in), and Do Stuff, then decamp to the Firehouse to see folks in the evening.

If anyone fancies meeting up for lunch mid-afternoon snack and/or coming to t'pub with us in the evening, then just shout.

Oh, if anyone wants to walk us around the new(ish) bits of town and help me not get lost, that'd also be cool...

Um, somehow:

Which is a bit weird as I don't really do that much politics on here (well, actually everything I write about is political but that's because everything is political, especially if it involves more than one person). Also, um:

By more than one person, some of whom the feelings definitely mutual. Weird.

Nominations close tonight at midnight, mine are here, but I'm repeating them below so I can add links in for SB tomorrow, gotta go now, just got out of the bath and we're off to Leeds for susannah_banana DJing at the Wendy House and I'm late...

( My nominations are... )

So, the purchase of the Ka has provoked much discussion here and elsewhere^[1] (bunch of petrolheads and weirdoes), and Jennie has decided that she wants to name it^[2]. She has a preferred option^[3]. I'm not too keen^[4]. So I thought I'd enlist some help from you lot^[5]. There now follows a poll^[6]:
( Cut for huuuge but silly poll )
I mean, seriously, why would you want to give your car a name, let alone a silly pun? Oh, wait, I'm in Yorkshire, it's Jennie. Combine the two and I'm doomed, aren't I?

Oh, the other scary thing? She went to the post office today to pay her wage in, and I met her at Sainsbury's to do some shopping. She'd bought a copy of the Highway Code and some L plates. Be afraid...

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[1] A friends locked post at her personal journal.
[2] It's a really stupid idea of a name.
[3] I mean it, really really stupid.
[4] I hate it.
[5] Help me oh friends list, you're my only hope.
[6] As always, non-LJers will need to login with an OpenID or create an LJ account to vote.

What's your reaction to a chance to go on a decent rollercoaster? The reason I ask this is because we^[1] went to Blackpool Pleasure Beach^[2], and Jennie insisted on going on as many of the big fast rides as possible. At one point she observed to one of the crew "I'm not bothered, but he is"—meaning me. The thing is? I wasn't bothered, just really really not caring. I just don't really see the appeal of most of them—one of them, the Revolution, announced itself as "the most thrilling ride of your life", but to me it was merely meh. I figure there are four main reactions to these things, so I thought I'd find out.
Poll #1209471 Rollercoasters
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

Your reaction to White Knuckle Rides and other fast high things

It's not that I didn't enjoy the day out—both shrublette^[3] and Jennie were obviously really enjoying it, and some, especially the 'family' rides were good. I just was completely unmoved by the Big Dipper et al. The Avalanche was quite good, and the Mouse was actually scary as it felt like we were falling off at every corner, but I wouldn't say I really enjoyed them that much.

You? Do you like rollercoasters?

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[1] We being miss_s_b, her daughter shrublette—it being her 5th birthday Friday) and her dad (who runs her YouTube channel)

[2] It has a flash thing that autoplays with music, fair warning for those of you that don't have flashblock as a standard install.

[3] So much so that some of them, notably River Caves, Derby Racer and Grand Prix she went on again, and again, and again (and again). Fortunately Daddy volunteered to redo fair few of them...

Right, Richard posted a poll (go vote) about the CDs on his desk, and said we should do the same. Well, this isn't exactly the CDs on my desk, it's the stack I just moved from the base of the stairs as I'm vacuuming^[1]. It's basically the stuff Jennie's taken to work over the last few weeks and not put back into the CD shelves yet. So, which of them would you choose to listen to?
Poll #1195103 Musical Mystery Tour
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

Which of these would you listen to?

What is the nearest CD, tape or LP to you right now?

Bonus special points—6 of them are my CDs, want to guess which?

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[1]You can tell I'm vacuuming, right? Definitely cleaning the house, not at all distracted and sat back at the computer again. Why she thinks I love the thing is beyond me, we got it to clear up after her filthy dogs...

Sobriety is overrated. Especially if you've spent the evening in the company of a beautiful girl serving beer in the best real ale pub in Yorkshire. During their bi-annual beer festival.

Oh, she's also (finally) started work on building the pub website. So it needs some links in so that Google starts to pay attention. Hint.

My daily digest of texts, tweets and status updates.

• 11:16 is still not back at work, damn developers. Ah well, more personal projects, the joys of self employment... #
• 14:28 deciding that if we do buy a car, Jennie's not choosing the name. At all. Ever. UlriKA... #
• 20:35 has just answered his phone to find it was his fiancée, ringing from the living room to ask me to bring something down... #
• 02:09 is thinking Blackadder is a poor choice for insomnia viewing. Wide awake now. Still, very cool... #

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Microblogging by SMS, using LoudTwitter and Twitter.

My daily digest of texts, tweets and status updates.
( Sent by text from wherever I was at the time )

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Microblogging by SMS, using LoudTwitter and Twitter.

Went to Leeds today, Jennie's off for a hen night in York this evening so split the journey up. Plan had been to have lunch in the excellent Scarbrough Hotel opposite the station, but it was packed full of Leeds fans and all the seating was taken by a hen party, so we went on into town and ended up lucking out with seating at Whitelocks. Considering that it's the oldest pub in Leeds, it's damn impressive. Went there before^[2] but not actually had a meal. Um, yeah. Menu made it look a bit pricy. Really, it's not. It's really not. I ordered veggie bangers and mash with a side of onion rings. Plate full. And really really good. Jennie had roast chicken. She got a roast chicken. Seriously. It even looked good to me, and I don't eat meat. If you're in Leeds and looking for good food or good beer, either is worth a try, and Whitelocks is just cool anyway.

We wandered a bit after that, I wanted to get hold of a book. Smiths didn't have it, but they did have a nice pile of DVDs on offer and, well, we couldn't resist, so more classic Who^[1] and a few other things, including a boxed set of wooden board games^[3]. Waterstone's didn't have it either, but they did have an import of Android's Dream so that's ok. We decided that out of Borders and Waterstone's, Waterstone's wins, could've spent all day there, easily. Instead we just spent money we don't really have. Ah well, books are never bad.

So, given she's off galivanting in York and I'm not in the mood to go back out, it's me, the dogs, a wide screen TV and a glass (or three) of whisky. After a nice long bath that is. What should I watch first then?

Poll #1162622 DVD watching plans
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15

What would you watch tonight?

A review of the Thundercats DVDs we bought last time:

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[1] And some 5th Doctor stuff, does that count as "classic"?
[2] our first proper 'date' as it happens
[3] Does anyone actually play backgammon properly? Never actually tried it.

Interesting comment made at minnesattva's:

The sensible thing to do would be to differentiate LJ, position it if you like as an 'intellectual networking site', or the equivalent of a collaborative newspaper (it has news, opinion, cartoons...) - something you *read* (or write) rather than something you play at. You could even have a default set of people who would be added as your 'friends' when you started on LJ representing some of the best/most popular writing on here - people like say bradhicks or theyorkshergob who don't write about themselves on their journals much but write about actual *stuff*, but who you could then add or subtract at will...

Can't say I disagree with that at all, and am amused at the two choices given as examples. I have, naturally, got a whole passel of posts in my head on the whole SUP buyout/ending-of-Basic/interest not-really-censorship thing, but, y'know, lack of motivation strikes again. I do think ending Basic accounts is a daft idea, and I thinkt he way it wasn't clearly announced was insanely stupid.

SUP appear to want to treat LJ as a Social Network, not a blogging platform with SN elements, which I think is completely the wrong way to go, especially given the Russian market success where blogging means LJ. Ah well.

Possibility my long-on-hiatus alternate platform collection of ideas might get dug out again soon. Possibly.

Heh, guess what? Yup, little bit of a malaise when it comes to the will to write posts at the moment. I think it might be linked to being too happy (sorry): I need a little bit of anger in my soul, and despite the perpetual money worries, life is good right now. I even have a few potential clients for the part-time consultancy I really should already have set up. Anyway, a few people are doing this meme:

Everyone has things they write about. Everyone has things they don't write about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

So, y'know, go on, suggest something--promises to actually write the post may or may not be kept for lack-of-motivation or distracted-by-Jennie reasons (especially if she's got the new top that claire_smith made for her on), but it might happen.

There's also the fair warning that many of you might get the "political leanings" request if you don't normally post about such things--this is me, after all.

I'm currently in the process of sorting through, unpacking mine and combining into her shelves our CD collections. There are, naturally, many many duplicates.

I've just found a duplicate copy of White Zombie's Astro-Creep: 2000. I bought my copy in a record store in Leeds while visiting susanah_banana while she was studying up here.

I accept that we have similar tastes and thus have many doubled CDs. But that her copy was bought in the exact same shop?

I only came up here three times FFS, it's the other side of the country...