Homemade Chicken Korma or A Sad Day

Yesterday was a sad day. It marked the first Friday in 2011 on which I did not update this blog. For that I can only apologise. I can assure you it was for the best of reasons. Essentially, I forgot.

In honour of this sad, sad day, I have titled this blog after yesterday’s dinner, and called it A Sad Day, just so you know it’s sad.

Well go on, get crying!

Oh never mind.

Recently I have been persuaded by a friend into playing a game called Minecraft. If you know what Minecraft is, then I will include some pretty pictures for you, if not then gather round and listen to my tale.

Minecraft is a downloadable PC game, still in its Beta testing phase. This means the game isn’t complete and they are ironing out bugs and adding new features regularly. Technically it is a survival game. It cycles through day and night and during the night, things go bump (or boom depending on what thing it is). But this is not what Minecraft is really about.

The game generates an entire landscape populated with destroyable blocks. Once a block is destroyed, you can generally collect that block and place it somewhere else. You can also use various blocks are combinations of blocks to build things*. The first thing you want to build is a house**, so that you can have shelter from said things that go bump/boom. After that, the sky is the limit (quite literally – there is a point just above the clouds above which it is impossible to build).

But you by no means have to go up. In fact, as the first half of the name would suggest***, you are encouraged to mine down to the bedrock of the world. Here you will be greeted by various resources such as iron, gold and diamond in order to fashion glorious weapons, armour or, if you like, spades. Should you be able to find enough, you will then be able to build magnificent golden structures.

Another resource you can find down in the world is redstone. This is the game’s equivalent of electronic wiring, and allows you to build fantastical circuits and logic gates to your heart’s content. I myself have just made a combination lock to the door of my house which is bigger than the house itself.

This game is a huge sandbox of enjoyment and you can build very close to anything and everything you can imagine. There is also a dedicated wiki with crafting recipes and help on redstone circuits if you’re stuck for inspiration.

Now back to the bumping/booming things. You can, if you like, turn them off, allowing you to create to your hearts content without being bothered. Or you can set them to easy, medium or hard, depending on how suicidal you feel. Having not tried anything but easy and peaceful (no monsters), I can’t tell you what it’s like on a harder difficulty, but even on easy, if a creeper comes along and explodes behind you, you will die and whatever you were building in the vicinity will probably not be there when you respawn.

I was playing the game recently on the birthday of the friend who originally introduced it to me, and to demonstrate just what sort of things you can create, I will show you the cake I made him:

You may notice that the graphics quality is not that impressive. But the graphics aren’t the point of the game. And with the impressive processing power needed to generate the world (I’ve had at least 2 bluescreens so far from playing****), the graphics aren’t likely to be modernised very much.

I shall include links to various MC resources below, but for now I will just encourage you to try it out. It does unfortunately cost €15 to buy, but that will get you the full game for free once it is released, and I for one call that a very good deal considering the scope of the game.

Links:

Minecraft site: http://bit.ly/2UIfP

Minecraft wiki: http://bit.ly/h871IW

Yahtzee’s Minecraft review: http://bit.ly/dXjq3J

* Mine-craft

** Pro tip #1: don’t build a fireplace in a house made of wood. I speak from experience.

*** Mine-craft

**** Pro tip #2: try not to have the viewing distance set to far too much, it slows the game down.

Pork and Apple Bolognese or Bad Science

Last week I shared with you some rather horrible logical reasoning. This, as you may be aware, is known as bad science, and is governed by the following law, known as the Law of Logical Argument:

Anything is possible when you don’t know what you are talking about.

A chief example of this is the mathematical proof that 2=1, which I will demonstrate for you now.

Firstly assume that a=b. If you multiply both sides by a, you get a²=ab. Then add a² to each side and subtract 2ab to get 2(a²-ab)=a²-ab. Now dividing through by a²-ab will give you 2=1. If any of you are mathematically inclined then feel free to tell me why I get such an answer. The rest of you may marvel in my amazing ability to break Maths.

Using this fantastic flair for fuzzy logic, you can prove absolutely anything, and I intend to use it to invent hover-technology. Watch and learn.

Suppose you have a cat. First of all, aren’t you lucky, he/she is an adorable little thing! As you’re a cat owner, you will know that cats always land on their feet. This concludes the first part of our background.

Now, suppose you have a piece of buttered toast. First of all, stop right there. I know you want to eat it, but don’t. It will come in handy later. Now as you’re a buttered toast owner, you will know that by Sod’s Law a dropped piece of buttered toast will always land buttered side down when dropped on a carpet. This leads us nicely onto our final piece of set-up: suppose you have a carpet.

Now you have everything you need for hover technology. All you have to do is strap your buttered toast to the back of your cat and suspend it over the carpet. By our first claim, the cat will land on its feet. By our second, the toast will land buttered side down on the carpet.* The two of these laws will conflict with each other, and as the universe won’t know what to do you will find that your cat hovers sideways above the carpet.

You’re welcome.

* If this doesn’t work you may not have got the right amount of butter. Try adjusting this until you get it right. Also for best results, use Clover. It’s just nicer.

Sweet Potato and Bacon Risotto or (in)Frequently Asked Questions About The World

Last week I gave you what I considered to be an appropriate definition of culture. Today I am going to raise the tone a bit and ask several important questions regarding society as a whole.

Firstly, when was the last time you arrived anywhere in a giant egg?

If you hadn’t heard, the Grammy awards were on last week in America, and one of the nominees arrived in, that’s right, a GIANT EGG. I don’t think I need to tell you who it was*. If you turn up to an event in a dress made of meat, surely that isn’t going to be the end of things, and neither, I suspect, will her latest food-based stunt. Before long, I’m sure she will roll up to her hotel crouched over on a silver platter with an apple in her mouth**.

My second question is this: who you gonna call?

Consider the situation. There is something strange. This something is in your neighbourhood. If it’s not a ghost, which is something I will not get into right now, then the Ghostbusters aren’t going to be much help. You’re much better off calling the police, or better yet You’ve Been Framed. There’s £250 in that for you!

And finally, a question that we have all asked ourselves many a time:

Where did I put that thing I just had?

Everybody, to my knowledge, does this. You were holding something and about to do something with that something. But something else happened and then your something was somewhere else and you didn’t know where your something was! I can see this is going to get confusing, so let’s replace the word something with the word puppy because it is much quicker and easier to type, and everybody loves puppies*** ****.

Everybody always says “Oh, it’ll be in the last place you look”. But surely, if your puppy were in the last place you would look, then you should check that place first. But a ticket to Equatorial Guinea***** is not cheap, so this is often not feasible. And as Equatorial Guinea is the last place anybody would look for their puppy, then all the missing puppies in the world must be in Equatorial Guinea. So the only conclusion we can draw from this, and my top tip for this week, is as follows:

Equatorial Guinea is the perfect holiday spot for dog lovers.

* But for those of you who really don’t know, it was Lady Gaga.

** You heard it here first!

*** Unless you are the worlds biggest cat person, in which case you must be huge.

**** If you are allergic to bad science then leave now.

***** Formally the Republic of Equatorial Guinea******

****** Surely the last place anybody would look.

Sausages and Roast Vegetables or High Culture, Low Culture or Somewhere Inbetween?

How would you define culture? I would define it as a collection of pieces of entertainment that encourage thought and enjoyment simultaneously. Wikipedia would say Culture was a Canadian hip hop rapper and reggae artist who collaborated on a cover of Toto’s Africa. Wait, that’s not right. Forget that.

Wikipedia defines culture (or high culture) as a set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture. Personally I feel this leads to a slightly recursive definition if not for the other definition of culture – i.e. a Canadian hip hop rapper and reggae artist set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group – this refers to.

Wikipedia also gives a definition for low culture, saying it encompasses everything in society that has mass appeal. So you might ask “what is the difference?” (of course you might ask “where is the library?” but that’s not the question I’m going to answer).

The difference is that to be high culture, something must appeal greatly to a small group, and to be low culture it must just appeal to a large group. Of course you may ask “how do you define large, small and greatly?” (well actually you probably won’t – that distinction probably satisfied you and you would quite like me to shut up – but you should) but I won’t get into that for fear of losing you (please don’t leave me!).

So I think the best definition we can give of culture is the intersection of these two groups. To be culture, something should be both high culture and low culture. It should appeal greatly to a large group.

The original intention of this post was to demonstrate that video games count as culture, something I firmly believe though I know there are many who would disagree, but I felt that in order to know what was culture, I needed to know what culture was. So I will have to leave it to a later post to tell you why video games are a Canadian hip hop rapper and reggae artist.

Wait…

Roast Ham and Vegetables or Save On My Holiday

We, the very lucky of Bath University, are fortunate enough to get a week off after our first semester exams. The result of this for me was a holiday to the beautiful sunny isle of Cardiff with my girlfriend.

Our hotel room had a television in the corner, and though the Welsh-language channel was very tempting, we tended to watch Homes under the Hammer (because it’s awesome) while getting ready in the morning, which was followed every day by a program called Save My Holiday.

Funnily enough, this focused on people whose holidays needed saving. And our holiday was most certainly not one of those. In fact, it was probably one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. The hotel was in a fantastic location, equidistant from the station, the town centre and Cardiff Bay, home of the Doctor Who exhibition.

The main focus of our trip was to see Russell Howard at the Cardiff International Arena, but it became much more than that. We turned it into a 3 day stay, and went to visit Cardiff Castle and the Millennium Centre.

The castle itself was your standard motte-and-bailey, with a Norman keep (where they kept the Normans so I’m told) in the middle. The main house was gorgeous, with stunning architecture in some of the rooms, particularly the Arab Room (yes, it was really called that) with marble walls and a gold leaf ceiling. If you ever find yourself in Cardiff centre, it’s certainly worth a trip at about £5 entry, including a tour of the house and an audio guide.

Russell Howard was on good form, the highlight of his show being the moment he revealed the thong he was wearing. The Doctor Who exhibit was fantastic, right up to the moment the Cybermen tried to delete us.

Fortunately we managed to escape from the Cybermen, and moved on to the Millennium Centre, home of Torchwood, where we snapped some good photos. The bay was beautiful, despite the weather not really being great, and we took a look around to try and find a restaurant.

If you’ve ever been to Cardiff, you’ll understand when I say we were spoilt for choice. Every time we turned a corner there was another restaurant. We settled on a nice Chinese buffet called the Oriental Garden in the Red Dragon Centre, the third night in a row we had eaten out, so I was starting to get a bit full up.

It was a good trip at a great price, so if you ever want a good holiday on a tight budget, try Cardiff.

Garfunkel's Chicken Parmigiana or 5 Ways to Entertain Yourself in a Crisis

Today I become free of the revision-shackles of the past three weeks. It feels like it has been years. But it’s all behind me now (or will be within a few hours). To celebrate, I have decided to list for you the 5 best ways to keep yourself amused while bored.

I have extensive experience on this subject, because I am very often bored. It is a consequence of not doing much, or doing revision. And often you will have to take it upon yourself to find something to do.

1. Start a Blog

I can vouch for this one. In fact, just a few weeks ago I was bored and decided to start a blog. You may have noticed. If you have had a genius idea that everybody must know about immediately, this is the way to go. Otherwise, you probably just felt like sitting in front of your computer and actually doing something with the internet that isn’t keeping up to date with the social climate (Facebook) or perusing the fine art that is cats with captions (I Can Haz Cheezburger).*

2. Play a Game

Well that was obvious. When you’re bored, do something fun! Games are a fine example of fun. For example, who hasn’t at one point in their life thought “I would so much rather be playing Jenga right now” or “Ooh, that would make a good Scrabble word!” – nobody, that’s who.

3. Go and Annoy Somebody

This is a delicate one. You would be wise to choose somebody who is not easily motivated by revenge, because your legs are precious and you would be better off keeping them. Also has limited scope as whoever you annoy will eventually decide to ignore you or annoy you back (see comment re: your legs).

4. The Internet

Little more needs to be said. You know what to do.

5. Plan an Assault

Nothing can keep one so amused as tactical warfare.** Pick a building, preferably one you know the layout of or have detailed blueprints of lying around. Clear a large table, and a long stretch of time, and make sure you are meticulous in your details. For example, how many exits are there, and who is going to be guarding each one? If one of your friends has a short attention span, this is not the job for him, so maybe put him in the offensive unit.***

Once your assault is planned, take a good long look at the result. Was there something productive you could have been doing while you did that? Did it take you a really long time? Was there any point in it really? If the answers to these questions are yes, yes and no, then you have successfully entertained yourself. Well done.

Admittedly my definition of crisis in the title is a bit loose and in the end amounts to "when you are bored". But nobody likes to be bored, especially when you now have 5 things you can do about it.

* I mention these because that is how I spend the majority of my time, not as a satirical jibe at the ignorance of society today.

** Except maybe the fine art that is cats with captions.

*** Or better yet, on the defending team (your choice of rebels/insurgents etc.)

Chicken-fried Rice or Robot Baby Admin

I would like to take the opportunity, now that I’ve gotten into the swing of things, to discuss some administrative details. Updates to this blog will come on Fridays, and each update will bear the title corresponding to what I am having for dinner that day, which ties in nicely with the name of my blog. Additional updates may come during the week, but the regular update will still appear on Friday. If, perchance, I do not know what I am having for dinner yet, I will leave the date as the title and change it later, as you may see this coming Friday.

Thank you for your patience through this utterly dull post. As a reward, here is a picture of a robot baby:

Hey, I never claimed to be an artist.


EDIT: I have also decided to give each post a real title, which will come after the date/dinner. If this has re-bored you then please refer back to the robot baby.