I tried to make chocolate mousse today but messed up somewhere along the line. The chocolate was sloy melted over a bains-marie. Added four yolks and mixed, giving an awesome sheen. Whipped double cream and folded it in. Whipped egg whites until peaked and folded but then the mixture, instead of being smooth and creamy became a bit lumpen.

Did you take it off the pan after adding the egg-yolks? If it gets too hot the eggs scrabble when you mix the rest in.

Google Local (app) fail
I'm in Cornwall and did a search for McDonald's. (Yes I know, but we needed a quick pit stop).
Where did it want to sent me?
Idaho, USA.

Took it off the heat but don't think I let it cool long enough. Was in a frantic rush. The honeycomb I made seems to have come out well - 5 tbsp of sugar, 2 tbsp of golden syrup, melt in pan and boil. Frantically whish in 1 tbsp of bicarb and pour into a lined container. Let cool.

Ages ago I bought the nephew a 'Lego' police station (he neither knows nor cares so long as he can play with it) and only now have I looked at the box... the cops have guns, revolvers no less

He has the PSNI version


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I need to nominate myself. All the problems that I had with my iPhone were down to me. A friend popped over and told him my tail of woe, only for him to discover that I had used the mute button on. I feel such a fool.


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Nah, there's way too many officers...

My brothers laptop (a 13" MacBook). We got him an external hard drive so he could back it up and I've shown him several times how to do this,
I'm guessing I'm not a terribly good teacher as currently, TimeMachine says it hasn't performed a back for over 350 days (or the last time I was visiting and the laptop and external drive were in the same place).

I have to confess I just checked mine and it was turned off. Well back on now.

Backup run. Only 16 - 20 gig of data to copy since the last time (depending on whether it was Time Machine or SuperDuper!)

Now I've got to try an show my Mum how to run backups instead.
Given she gets freaked out by the trackball I have on my computer at home this isn't looking promising.

I've also got to install Snow Leopard at some point as well.

Still, onwards and sideways as another regular of 'round 'ere has been know to mutter from time to time.

OK, indulge me for a second here..

Some of you may know of a card game called Magic : The Gathering. It was a bit of a minor craze some years past. It was a card game where each player had their own deck of cards and used the cards to defeat the other player. M:TG (to it's friends) was set in a fantasy world - wizards and dragons and what have you. The man who originally created the game is a maths PhD called Richard Garfield.

Richard Garfield also created another similar card game, called Netrunner. It was set in a cyberpunk world - a world of massive global corporations, a pervasive global computer network and criminals, radicals and terrorists who hack the network to cause mischief to the corporations or make a quick fortune from the data they manage to steal away. One player plays as the corporations, the other plays as the hackers. Each player has their own entirely distinct deck of cards - no cards in the corporation player's deck of cards exist in the hacker's deck of cards, nor would it make sense if they did.

Netrunner is possibly my favourite game, ever. Board games, card games, video games, any sort of game. Ever.

Netrunner, despite being much better, was never anywhere near as popular as M:TG. When Garfield sold out to a chain of companies that eventually got bought out by the toy company Hasbro, Netrunner fell 'out of print' and the few remaining people with the cards to play became loath to actually use them as once they were damaged or lost, they were gone. Sort of like the people who have expensive, rare cars they are afraid to ever drive in case they just might crash.

A few months back, I heard an indie board games company (yes they exist) had acquired the rights to Netrunner and were bringing out a new version. I was, as you can imagine, somewhat intrigued. As I was home to receive parcels, I decided to order it over christmas. It arrived this afternoon.

It came in a wonderfully illustrated box, with letter work picked out in silver foil and fluorescent inks used to represent the glowing lines of data flowing through 'the grid' of the game's background. The box is also quite substantial - it's 11" square and roughly 3" deep. For those who game that's roughly the size of an XBox 360. For those that don't, it's roughly the size of a late generation VCR (not DVD player, VCR. You know, tapes).

With a box that size it must surely be a substantial game, I thought. What lovingly crafted pieces could be inside? How would they represent what was previously a card game on a board? Would the quality of the contents match the workmanship of the container? I carefully slid the lid up to reveal

A [LIFTED]load of cardboard spacer and two packs of cards.

Seriously, what the [lifted]. A box the size of a printer for two packs of cards? A box that I had to stay in to receive because there was no way it was fitting through my letter box? For two packs of cards?

Thankfully, the game is just as good as it was before, they've made some adjustments but left it effectively as it was. But for pity's sake, think of the polar bears...

I've had issues like that with Amazon. I once ordered some blank DVD or CDs (can't remember which) in a stack thingy and some pens to use on the discs. The discs came in a small box and had to be couriered. The pens (four pack) could easily fit through the letter box. Did they use a jiffy bag and royal Mail? Hell no. They used a box that was humongous - it could have stored a laser printer it was that big. After getting out all of the packaging, I finally found the pens.

Worse still, Amazon remain wasting packaging in this fashion. I've been getting likes of USB cables in boxes big enough to store computer monitors in.

I've spent far more time and money than I care to think about playing Magic, so quite curious about Netrunner. I've heard about it but that's about it. Might have to acquire some of the decks and give it a go.

Garfield is quite simply a legend in my book.

I always keep the Amazon packaging it's that sturdy

I'm assuming it's something to do with returns on broken items that caused it - I can't imagine they haven't cottoned on to a potential moneysaver, though you'd think they'd have more medium-size boxes. Play are worse, they send you something inappropriate every time!