This isn’t my usual fare, I know.  Look at it like a little something extra. One part of my Christmas haul this year was a waffle iron.  Little Breville unit, looks like a flying saucer with a temperature gauge.  It came with a collection of almost useless waffle recipes, so the hunt began for the perfect waffle. I picked up Primal Cravings from the guys over at Health Bent.  This has a pretty good waffle recipe, but it’s not a perfect recipe — I found it a little … chunky.  It didn’t spread like a good batter should — gluten’s good for something, right? Enter the Family-Favourite Oatmeal recipe.  This thing would be close to perfect except for the use of a megaton of carbohydrate, which isn’t really the way I like to start the day.  But man, it smells like the tears of Read More …

Snowpiercer is worse than Prometheus. Maze Runner is worse than Snowpiercer. Prior to this last couple weeks, I didn’t think you could suck at stories worse than Prometheus, but I stand corrected.

Today I bring you: Skype. Wait, what? No, not your usual Skype: this is the new Skype Translator. Seriously, aliens are here, they live amongst us, and a significant percentage hold R&D positions at Microsoft.

We had a sort of argument over lunch about whether Tomb Raider was a good game or not. This isn’t actually up for debate. 2013’s reboot of the francise was brilliant, the Internet loved it, and as we know, the Internet is the source of all correct opinion on our little blue-green Earth. Despite this, we had the argument because people got confused about what we were talking about.  Why were some of us confused? Seems there’s a game coming out today/tomorrow, involving Lara, and tombs. You could be forgiven for thinking that this was a Tomb Raider game, but it’s actually a Lara Croft game. Wait, what? Here, let me break it down for you. The good games are all called “Tomb Raider” (or derivative now). You’ve got the excellent Tomb Raider from last year, re-released in Definitive Addition Read More …

He’s a Liverpool supporter, I know that much. Also an Apple customer, gets the latest iDevices.  Lives in the UK, buys quite a few apps — mostly sports games.  Likes his FIFA.  I know the first car he owned, the street he grew up on, and what his number is. Most of this I know because he made the error of setting up one of my email addresses as his Apple ID.  I tried to contact him about the error, and he got abrasive, so I just … fixed the problem.  He’s now got himself a new Apple ID, I guess? Then there’s the other one.  This one is from a different continent — lives in the US.    Recently got himself a new car, quite a nice Subaru if that’s your thing.  He had to finance it though — five Read More …

Apparently some people prefer to get their entertainment, not from books, but from other… things. In order to help you in your quest (if you’re one of these types), may I present a couple of things that might not have hit your radar. Saga If you’d told me — just a couple days ago — that I’d be mad sick all over a comic series about a chick with faery wings and a dude with devil horns who get together and have a love child, traversing the stars in a rocket ship that’s a tree, I’d have hit you upside the head again and again until the stupid came out.  Turns out, that’s exactly what Saga is, and it’s — very possibly — the best graphic series I’ve read.  The art work by Fiona Staples (@) is on fire, very much Read More …

We’re going through a bit of a restructure at work at the moment. It’d be easy to say it’s being run by a the International Cunt Circus, but that’s not really true — turns out, it’s being pretty well done.  That’s not to say that I think that they’re doing everything right, but they’re showing willing: a rare example of humans listening to feedback and changing their position. Regardless of all of this, there are often people who leave a restructure worse off — with a job they didn’t want, or without a job at all.  I know employment rules are different the world over, but whatever: being fired is like getting an extra helping of ass biscuits.  I’m close to one or two of the people effected by this, and it’s hard for anyone in their shoes to think that things Read More …

How we look at good and evil is a real trip. In my never-ending search for meaning, I stumbled across Snowden’s presence at TED in Canadia recently. It’d be fair to say: much of the rhetoric in this talk seems to be seeking answers to whether Snowden is a hero or a criminal.  I really like the debate, because regardless of where you land on this one it really helps to cement my belief that good and evil are just points of view. I left the talk scratching my head as much about Internet security as I did about villainy and heroism.  I’d like to bake some of these concepts more into my writing.