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  • An awesome article that encourages people to comment on photo’s intelligently.

    Certainly something I’d love for some of my photo’s would be nice to see more people (especially on sites like flickr) make a comment with more thought involved to it than, great, crap, i love it etc. The article is pretty good – gives examples (hopefully that people won’t use word for word) how to make a comment on a photo you loved, how to ask questions about a photo (more than just how did you do that.?!?!) and how to provide feedback in a non-negative way.

  • Watermelon Curry.

    Half a small watermelon or quarter of a large one.
    4 garlic cloves, crushed.
    1 pinch turmeric powder.
    1 tsp cumin seeds.
    6 – 8 cardamom pods.
    1 tsp hot chili powder.
    1 cup coconut milk.

    Peel the watermelon and cut the flesh into bite-sized cubes.

    Fry the garlic, cumin seeds and cardamom pods in a little oil a deep frying pan for one minute. Add the powdered spices and coconut milk. Simmer for 2 – 3 minutes until thickened.

    Add the watermelon cubes to the sauce, gently tossing the watermelon cubes until each is fully coated with sauce. Remove from the heat and stir occasionally until cool.

    Serve as a side dish or as a light meal with rice or naans.

    —

    Some potential modifications – add more chilli powder to make it hotter and drop some garlic cloves to reduce the garlicyness.

  • Blu-Ray why is it not gaining consumer traction, quite franky I believe the answer is really quite simple and the studios are somewhat retard for not waking up and making this format the DVD killer that it could be – PRICE. Currently those studios that are bringing their back catalogue to market are tying to sell them from between $35 to $45AUD retail. This is in a word – insane. The same movies on DVD can be picked up from between $10 and $25.

    For myself (and I assume other movie customers) do not consider BluRay sufficient increase in quailty to pay $10-25 more for the exact same content. I could understand perhaps a $5AUD premium on the quality. My message to studio’s is simple – you want to move Blu-Rays – release them at prices comparable to DVD’s – you’ve already made the film the tranfer to the disc’s cannot cost as much as you’re trying to gouge us for!

    My current DVD collection is quite extensive (and being added to all the time) at about 350 titles – my Blu-Ray has a big fat zero (0) nothing, nada, zip as its tally thus far and until prices change, I doubt that number will either!

  • This Cab Sauv from Wirra Wirra is a fantastic drop. I think it deserves a phwoar 😉 Seems the 2006 goes for $30/btl I’d suspect that I got mine on sale somewhere for around the $20 mark but I still think it would be worth $30AUD as price of admission. The nose is fantastic and very layered, on the mouth I liked it better after about an hour worth of breathing time – some of that “oakiness” left it giving much better integration of fruit and oak and voilets opened up within the nose.

    Perhaps I need to re-evaluate my source of this drop as it is only available from the cellar door, perhaps I paid the $30 price of admission as the “Sparrows Lodge” blue labeled wines are only available from the Wirra Wirra cellar door. A fantastic drop was most sad to discover the bottom of the bottle all too quickly.

  • It seems that having the occasional drop of red wine could really be good for you.? The catch is that it seems the resveratrol is something that is very helpful for your health and diet and can be found in red wine (albeit in small quantities) yet not so much in white wine. So don’t feel guilty having a glass with your dinner – its helping you stay healthy!

  • Now with the common availability of wireless internet connection over 3G phone networks having a portable computer is now feasible for many people there seems to be a dearth of decent portable computers to suit my needs

    Things like the eeePC from ASUS seem almost ideal but there are a few issues with it ? slightly too small and horrific battery life. If the keyboard and screen resolution were a little better and the interface had a tad more polish (to suit the limited screen real estate) it would be damn near an instant purchase; but its biggest holdback is the battery ? 2-3H battery life, one would assume quite a lot less when driving something the huwei E220 USB 3G/HSDPA modem.

    Now both Intel and VIA have released their next generation mini-mobile CPU?s (Atom and Nano respectively) performance and battery life should be improved in these devices the Atom being the most interesting of the two CPU?s ? hyper threading and SIMD instructions included but out of order execution has been dropped – it will be most interesting to see how such things are supported by software. Nvidia?s Tegra is very interesting an ARM based solution complete with OpenGL-ES support and a tiny power consumption footprint. One could conceive a decent portable device could be constructed based on this platform (the current non-3G iPhone is based on something with a similar architecture).

    However my needs are pretty simple ? I want a portable device with a reasonable screen (1200×800 pixels), reasonable keyboard for the fat fingered amongst us and fantastic battery life when used with a USB modem. I think drivers will be Tegra?s limitation and price will limit the adoption and acceptance of the Atom and Nano platforms, only time will tell ? I think manufacturers have overlooked the reason that people have flocked to the eeePC, yes it is partially form factor but overall it is price I think there is a whole market segment between eeePC and subnotebooks (Vaio, Lenovo X300, MacBook Air) where people want some of the functionality of these subnotebooks, but not the prices attached to them.

    ** Addtion – whinge and you shall receive – seems the eeePC1000 may suit my needs – depends on final cost I suppose which looks like it might be going up.

  • Kingsleys Crab and Steak House have recently made me very happy in the way that they have handled an issue I had with them, and it’s always nice to have a happy story to tell regarding customer service.

    The not so nice:
    I came in this morning to two marketing emails from Kingsleys (which I cannot read as the work firewall strips everything from them, so I still have no idea what the contents were). So I clicked the unsubscribe button to remove my email address from the list. About 30 minutes later I got another idential message.

    Mood: Grumpy

    The nice – I emailed the person on their website who looks after marketing and complained with the following text:

    “Oi,I am not amused. I never agreed to be signed up to a newsletter, I unsubscribed from the newsletter and you keep sending them to me.

    If it were not for your good steaks i’d never eat there again, I’ll not be giving you a legit phone number or email again – you’ll probably sell it to a call centre off shore and have them spam me about life insurance or something!

    Grrr!

    Grrrr!

    yes – it’s Monday and I’m grrrrrrrrrrumpy.”

    I was personally responded too and had my name removed from the mailing list within 15 minutes. I had one more question regarding future potential orders and it was confirmed again within 15 minutes that if I entered my email address on the website for an online booking if I would be re-subscribed – it was confirmed that I would not be. Great news, I’ll be visiting Kingsley’s again and will probably book online! While I think they should have never emailed me in the first place at least their customer service was happy to help!

    I’m rather happy that I don’t feel the need to boycott them any more too, as they’re a great place to eat!

  • Women who drink wine avoid dementia, study says

    Want a long an happy marriage, especially one where you can interact well into your twilight years – share your wine with your partner! Sounds like a good reason to pop a bottle.

  • This interesting blend of Shiraz, Cab Sauv and Malbec is rather tasty but beginning to show its age.

    Smell – hint of menthol, red fruit and red berries.

    Taste – Chunky wine with a great weight and phenomenal finish. Black fruits and berries up front, some slightly sour(this was nice, somewhat juicy) fruit and spices mid to end palate and a long dry, cloying end. Love the end, if anything this wine has a little too much Vegemite(yeast) at this late stage of its life.

    Tried this wine with a sirloin steak – it may have been designed to go with lighter meats but with the steak it was a brilliant accompaniment.

    • 2005 Wynns Coonawarra Estate Shiraz – Australia, South Australia, Limestone Coast, Coonawarra (2/22/2008)
      This is a pop and pour – decanted for 4 hours and all the nice nose blew away :(, at the end left with strong menthol – which completely overshadowed hints of blueberry, plum and liquorice. Hints of cream and vanilla on the nose not too bad.

      Palate – nice mid palate but it’s far too short, flavours are muted, this wine is “weak” flavour wise, finishes with a vegemitey taste in your mouth.

      Hoping that this is a defective bottle, have one more, but will wait a few years and pop and pour the puppy. (83 pts.)

    Posted from CellarTracker