May 2007
Monthly Archive
Second Post From Word 2007
Posted by georgemc on 29 May 2007 | Tagged as: blog
I’ve now seen the result of my first Word 2007 blog interface post; the main thing I missed first out was categories, and the formatting after the star is not quite as I expected. But not bad! A very useful tool!
Further surfing revealed a post which explains Word’s integration with your blog’s categories (very nice) and is a much better introduction to this topic than my posts!
First Posting from Word 2007
Posted by georgemc on 29 May 2007 | Tagged as: blog
I had a vague memory that MS Word 2007 has a blog interface, so I thought I would give it a whirl. Surfing for “blog from word” I found Joe Friend’s posting, and this got me started (even though his pictures seem to have gone away). Registration with this WordPress site seemed to work fine, so on I go. If it doesn’t work, I’ll post a follow-up but this is all as I wrote it inside Word. OK, let’s insert a random picture and see what happens:
With a bit of luck, you will see my trusty QSS mug. I notice that the GUI is pared down, e.g. no equation editor, but I see that I can put in shapes…
well once you figure out that you need to start a new canvas. Hmm, might be useful…..
Chicken with Dried Limes and Curry Leaves
Posted by georgemc on 27 May 2007 | Tagged as: food and drink
I had a curry recipe book in the 80s which featured a dish involving chicken, curry leaves and dried limes. I made this dish several times and on each occasion it was a hit. I lost the recipe book in the early 90s and I have been trying to find it or a similar recipe ever since.
I am amazed in this Internet age that I still can’t find a matching recipe, so I decided to just make up my own version based on what I can remember from 18 years ago when I had the book, blended with my own experience of stuff that works. What follows was tried out as an experiment with some friends a few nights ago and I am happy to say that it worked very well. Here’s what to do:
Serves 4:
Ingredients:
- 8 garlic cloves
- 80g of peeled root ginger
- 1tsp hot chili powder
- 1tsp tumeric
- 1tsp ground cardamom
- juice 1 lemon
- 400g natural yogurt (most of a UK big tub)
- 1tsp salt
- 800g boneless skinless chicken
- 3 dried limes (or 4 small ones)
- mug of boiling water
- 3-4 tbsp oil (I use groundnut)
- 1 medium onion chopped
- 12 curry leaves
- 1 tsp ground cumin
Method:
put yogurt and ingredients up to and including salt into food mixer and make a puree. Cut chicken in to bite sized pieces and cover with marinade. Put in fridge for 4hrs or so.
Put the dried limes and boiling water into a mug. Put something on top of the limes to keep them submerged. Slowly cook the chopped onions in the oil until they are browning (20mins). Add the curry leaves and cumin and cook for 1 minute. Now begin to cook small batches of the chicken in the onion mixture so that they brown a little (reserving in a dish once browned). Then return all the chicken to the pan and add the dried limes and their soaking water and the rest of the marinade. Heat at a low peep until the chicken is cooked.
I like to leave this overnight and then simply reheat when required the next day - though obviously chef must check everything is OK with a bit of toasted pita bread on the night of cooking! I have not tried tasting the limes themselves (you may want to reserve them before serving), and some recipes seem to suggest breaking them up before using them. I don’t think the recipe I lost suggested that.
This recipe is completely improvised and is provided without any warranty. If you have improvements, suggestions or even a good experience of trying it, please let me know.
Holyrood from Arthur’s Seat (First Flickr Post)
Posted by georgemc on 20 May 2007 | Tagged as: pictures
Holyrood from Arthur’s Seat, originally uploaded by perspector.
Nice day so I walked up Arthur’s Seat and took some photos. When I got back I opened a Flickr account and uploaded one of them. I then saw that I could blog directly from Flickr, so I set that up too - very easy; Flickr knows about WordPress and leads you through the steps to set up remote posting.
Then all you do (still in Flickr) is type the usual nonsense (i.e. this) - and voila - pretty picture gets posted on your blog, hosting courtesy of yahoo.
Death of the Desktop (Aza Raskin)
Posted by georgemc on 18 May 2007 | Tagged as: human computer interaction
This is an excellent talk by Aza Raskin, son of Jef, which amongst other things introduces his very neat product Enso, which I’ve been playing with for just 5 minutes (doing its tutorial) and I am hooked! The talk is full of very thought provoking ideas and spot on criticism of the current HCI situation. Another hit in the excellent Google Tech Talk series.
Not Fooled Again
Posted by georgemc on 13 May 2007 | Tagged as: drumming
I was surfing for videos of Keith Moon playing drums and I found the above video by Beau Ferchaud; fantastic playing! He’s no slouch at covering Bonzo either. What was I saying about a 1000 mile journey……
Side by Side Comparison
Posted by georgemc on 12 May 2007 | Tagged as: graphics, Perspector, PowerPoint, 3D, presentations
An effective technique in delivering a message, especially a message conveyed using images, is to make a comparison. For simplicity we shall start by comparing 2 things.
Let’s say I am concerned about salads featuring tomatoes:
OK, no point having tomatoes without the catalyst of basil:
In fact I would go as far as to say:
Basil is more important than tomatoes on a pure taste per cost of ingredient basis.
Now, I’m not sure I believe what I just said about my salad, but I hope the images helped me convey the idea. The third image, which shows the relative importance central to my argument, is made easy to do in Perspector with its layout features; I can insert and then scale the size of each image into a new Perspector frame in seconds. I chose a side by side frame layout to emphasize the fact that the two images are strongly related (more-so than just using 2D). The outcome is that I can argue the relative importance of the two ingredients just using pictures. And pictures help make great presentations.