If you Plurk and are also a flickrer, you could well be interested in the Plurk People Photo-a-Day group on flickr. The idea is to post a photo that you’ve made each and every day.
We’d be pleased to have you join us as we begin this photographic journey through 2010 – visit the group via the link above and request membership – either myself or the Mad Poet will add you to the group as soon as we possibly can.
See you there!
One of the many things I like about Plurk is its user interface – it’s a rather grand , interactive, left-right scrolling timeline that allows user to easily see their own Plurks as well as those of their friends, including an easy way to identify Plurks that have been responded to. I’ve been using Plurk for nigh on eighteen months, having been introduced to it by my online friends that I’ve been in contact with for well over five years.
I’ve tried Twitter -and I still use that for brief contact and posting of links as well as keeping up with various services/organisations that post brief information, often including links – but it’s Plurk that is my preferrred social-networking microblog service. Plurk is easy to use, easy to understand and easy to communicate with. Having used Twitter and having had a go at a mutltitude of microblogging services, Plurk stands out way above the crowd. In short, Plurk rocks.
Like many grand things that rock, it has – unfortunately – been ripped off. Not just by any company – but by Microsoft China. A big corporation ripping off a young startup that is doing amazing work. Surely Microsoft has the resources to do their own work? One would think so – but one would be wrong.
If you’d like more information on this dastardly deed, please see the post on the Plurk blog entitled Microsoft China rips off Asia’s No. 1 Microblogging Service as well as the followup Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology.
I would like to think – and hope – that this will all be resolved in Plurk’s favour – time will tell.
I had mentioned on Facebook tonight that my wife had made dessert for us: Ice-cream and ‘Schnapps over a slice of pine-apple. The first comment included the recipe below, courtesy of a fellow Facebook-follower:
1. Cover pineapple slice with brown sugar.
2. Pour on Brandy and bake in the oven for a very short time.
3. Cover in a double-shot of Butterscotch Schnapps.
4. Place dollops of icecream over contents to fit size of bowl.
We plan to make this recipe over the weekend! Enjoy!
As some of you might have read on Facebook, I had a chicken-dinner tonight: Chicken Kiev. Amusingly, I tried to google/search for the best method for cooking chicken. All I got was ways to make a Kiev, which was not what I needed. So I asked my followers on Facebook for a great way to cook chicken.
One friend suggested a frying pan and little bit of oil. This is the method I used in my bachelor-days. I remember those years passionately … when my frying pan was best friend in the kitchen!
Another colleague, Richard Pascoe, suggested: 40 to 45 mins, 180 degrees,use a baking tray and then on baking paper, I turn the tray around several times. Less time if fan forced.
After ten years marriage, our kitchen is decked out with a few amazing technical innovations. What I enjoy most is the fan-forced gas oven. As my wife will testify, it allows us to cook an amazing array of recipes, easily though not always quickly. Regardless of time, the food comes out excellent and ready to eat.
But why am I telling you this? Because cooking is an art and not all of us have green-thumbs in the kitchen. So I went on a web-hunt for sites that improve our knowledge of cooking.
Tonight we have five sites that will hopefully teach us how to cook chicken easily and tastily:
1. The Lenards Recipe Category List.
Wow, what a great list! Lenards have put in the effort for every meal of the day, including a few special items for the children to enjoy. Yummo!
2. All About Cooking : Chicken.
According to this site, “Chicken is a major feature of just about every cuisine on the planet, whether roasted, grilled, stewed, fried or cooked in any other way.” So many options and all of them tasty! Something tells me I am going to be cooking more chicken this month!
3. This is the obligatory YouTube video that encompasses chicken, beer and humour — yes, the perfect recipe mix! They say: All you need for this barbecue chicken recipe favourite is two cans of beer (or water if you must), salad oil dressing, 1 onion, salt, pepper, and any favourite basting sauce, such as our garlic butter with soy sauce. Fire up your grill to 325-350f, and in as little as 2 hours you will be dancing right along with the roasters, as their tender and juicy meat falls off the bones.
4. Flat Out Like a Chicken Cooking (Bite Me)
From the website that brings men happiness every day of the week, we have a simple little recipe that includes a good wine to go alongside the meal. Now that is passion!
5. Aussie Chicken Recipes
Because I come from the land down-under, I had to find an Aussie site that gave a decent recipe. This site supplies a whole HOST of great recipes, ranging from cakes to casseroles. Whilst their web site appearance is a little 1990, the information provided is diverse!
Next time I’ll be checking out how to cook a good steak … because every man likes a good steak! How do you like your meat – rare, medium or well done? I prefer meat cooked rare to medium.
This is a real and actual extract from a “Home Economics” book printed all the way back in 1950.
I had the book for a long time, then when I met SWMBO found it on the wall. I married her not because I thought she would follow the instructions, but because we are good friends who enjoyed each others company. Thirteen years on, we are still happily married. Just read the following:
Plan ahead – even the night before – to have a delicious meal ready on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the welcome needed.
Take fifteen minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair, and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little jovial and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.
Make one last rip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives, gathering up school books, toys papers, etc. Then run a dust cloth over the tables.
Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too.
Don’t greet him with problems of complaints. Don’t complain if he’s late for dinner.
Count this as minor, compared with what he might have gone through that day.
Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces. If they are small, comb their hair, and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures, and he would like to see them playing the part.
At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of washer, dryer, dishwasher, or vacuum cleaner. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Greet him with a warm smile and be glad to see him.
Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillows and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice. Allow him to relax – unwind.
You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first.
Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure, his need to be home and relax.
Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.
If my woman SWMBO read that, you’d be able to hear her laughing in Dreamworld.
I’m doing a bit of doubling up this week as I also posted these quotes on my own personal blog, anyway hope you find them amusing.
Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.’
- Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy Carter)
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I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: – ‘No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.
- Mark Twain
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The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.
- George Burns
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Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
- Victor Borge
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Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
- Mark Twain
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By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
- Socrates
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I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
- Groucho Marx
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My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.
- Jimmy Durante
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I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
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Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
- Alex Levine
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My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.
- Rodney Dangerfield
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Money can’t buy you happiness … But it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
- Spike Milligan
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Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was SHUT UP .
- Joe Namath
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I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap.
- Bob Hope
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I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it
- W. C. Fields
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We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
- Will Rogers
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Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill
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Maybe it’s true that life begins at fifty .. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.
- Phyllis Diller
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By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he’s too old to go anywhere.
- Billy Crystal
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And the cardiologist’s diet: - If it tastes good spit it out
When I was about sixteen years old, my parents gave my stepbrother a great book: How to Win Friends and Influence People. I am fairly sure he read it. And I know everyone else did too. I managed to get my hands on the book for a week, reading it cover to cover. But that was … sheesh, twenty one years ago. I am going to purchase it for myself.
This book not only taught me about interpersonal communication, effective negotiation, and how to win/lose an argument without getting beaten to a pulp. Twenty years on, and I sometimes wonder if I actually read the book. I remember it – but I sometimes have days where I take life a little too seriously, take on way too much for one person, and forget that I am not immortal.
As an Australian, the worst crime we have is believing we are so far away from the rest of the world that those atrocities could never happen over here. You never know when that bus is going to hit.
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
Maya Angelou
What do you get when you mix Photography with Coffee?
Yes, it is fake, presumably the work of Photoshop.
I’ve a bit lax lately and haven’t posted here, but you probably haven’t even noticed.
I can relate to these wonderful quotes from Maya Angelou!
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
It’s our circumstances that make us who we become. Not just what we choose to do with our life, but how we try to fix the problems we perceive we have. Or if we do anything at all.
Having taken an interest in a few different subjects over the last twenty years, I am happy to have settled into this one: Web Site Design and Development. What do I enjoy most? Building and testing CSS. Shooting photographs of unusual items in my ’shtudio’, portraits of people and colourful landscapes. Consequently, I smile a lot more than I have in a long time.
I have so many other interests that take up a lot of my time that I lead a very busy life. When people ask what I do in my spare time, I say "Sleep." Simple as that. Some people seem to think I am copping out of an answer, so will ask again, "Haha, but really. What do you do?" That’s a different question, I respond, but do you really want to know the answer? Usually they do not.
Anyhow, it’s my life, I am keeping myself very busy at a lot of different things. I can be found simultaneously purchasing shares to make my next billion credit, creating an image for an advertisement that will be see all around Australia, dreaming of my next camera, designing a website for a friend PLUS vacuum the lounge-rugs.
For those who are asking, "Why?" Because sometimes its good for both the brain and spirit to remind oneself of the journey, not just the pit stops along the way. Especially when they are pits and stops, but not an oil change.