Christening

Today was my nephew's Christening. It took place in Lancaster Cathedral and was a great event. The Cathedral is a great victorian-gothic building and has had an internal re-vamp! The fun and jollities continued after at my house and we had a big buffet meal and christening cake and champers! It was fab. Anyway, you know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. See the side toolbar for a link to the pics, or click here.

Toad in the Hole

Source: Anthony Warrell-Thompson

Ingredients
For the Batter:
115g/4oz plain flour
large pinch of salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 large eggs
300ml/½ pint milk
8 good quality pork, beef or vegetarian sausages
2 tbsp/30g of beef dripping or white vegetable fat
2 tbsp/30g Dijon mustard

Method
1. To make the batter, sift the flour into a large bowl. Add the salt and pepper.
2. Make a well in the centre and break in the eggs. Using a wooden spoon gradually beat the eggs into the flour then slowly beat in the milk until the batter is the consistency of double cream.
3. Strain and push any remaining lumps through a sieve. Stir in the thyme. Cover and leave to stand for 30 minutes, or ideally 3-4 hours.
4. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
5. Heat a large non-stick pan and cook the sausages over a medium heat until golden brown all over. If you do not have a non-stick pan add a little oil. Turn off the heat and brush the sausages with the mustard. Set aside.
6. Place the dripping or white vegetable fat into an ovenproof dish and pop in the oven for 5 minutes or until the dripping is hot and hazy.
7. Add the sausages to the hot dish and pour in the batter. Immediately return the dish to the oven and cook in the oven for 35-40 minutes until well-risen and golden brown.
8. Serve a portion of the toad in the hole with baked beans, if you like them, seasoned with black pepper and a large knob of butter.

RANSOM

Ok, if you're reading this then you'd better pay up. The scarf wants monetary reward to come home.

Getting sorted	Enjoying the view	Having a mid morning coffee
HALF PIPE!	Napping	On The Tiles

Bikes and Trains don't mix

So since I've been unemployed I'm looking for more work. It may come soon, however I'm waiting on an interview to be had on Thursday for an Admin role at the college so watch this space. Yesterday was good fun. Beccy and I went for a cycle around the fylde area, to Inskip then Elgin or something then Roseacre and Wharles. We didn't stop in the pub called the Eagle and Child although I hear it is "interesting". mmm.

I got on the train home and chatted delightfully about not much to the conductor while he checked my ticket and due to a stroke of luck the uber swishy pendolino to Oxenholme in the Lake District pulled in to Preston as I did. So a hop skip and a jump and hopped on, of course querying the whereabouts of the bike rack to the changing staff. "At the front" the new train manager gestured with an added "have you got a reservation".

"No"

"Well where are you going?"

"Lancaster"

"Get on where the driver is"

I legged it down the platform and the new driver gestured to jump aboard, I olbliged willingly, strapped my bike down and found a seat.

My suspicions were arisen by a notice on the door through which I'd entered into the carriage from the bike racks which said "STAFF ONLY". I hesitated momentarily but the driver wouldn't let me throught the door would he?

The door did open and I untied my bike and waited for the train to halt in the station. It did and a beeping noise began to indicate the door was ready to open. I searched around, perhaps the door automatically opened? No there's a button somewhere. Frantically I scanned the area. Nothing. I opened the door into the carriage and shouted "Does anyone know how to open this door!" Nobody looked round. There was only one option, I'd have to go through the carriage.

I hiked the bike on to it's back wheel and ran down the aisle shouting to the passengers to get out of the way. They did so obligingly. I battled with the swishy touch button door and disembarked onto the platform hurriedly as the door beeped shut behind.

"You said Oxenholme!" shouted the train manager from somewhere down the platform.

I proceeded to have a discussion with the platform supervisor. I won't go into further details he told me I shouldn't have been on the train without a reservation. I said "well the train manager let me on". I asked if I could get a reservation on the day and he told me that "it's unlikely because they're all coming back from Glasgow in the Summer". At one point he asked for my ticket, which I couldn't find, and later remembered I had slotted it in my GQ at the point up to which I had read. I fumbled around and found the 1st part of my 2 part return. He pointed out that it was a day return. I had bought it from the booth on friday and had assumed, as it was 1650 that I had been sold an open return. I hastened to the exit and he followed me saying something about I didn't have a valid ticket and I shouldn't have been on the train. Escaping quickly I jumped on my bike and pedalled away!

And the story continues...

So we had made the RS-232 cable we needed in the LRGS technology labs with 4 core wire, two sockets we chanced upon in a "electrical bits and bobs" draw and some solder. It was the beginning of an era of my life. Problem was, what to do with it. It was no good. We knew nothing about anything to do with making 2 computers talk to one another.

For a while it seemed futile. Windows 98 was new and exciting and SE was a mere twinkle of an eye and things weren't as easy as they seem to be now. We knew what should be happening. Then one day someone gave me a floppy disk, the contents of which a .txt file named Null_Modem_Know_How, or something like that. It described the method one needs to follow in order to obtained what seemed like a break through. It worked. The exact date eludes my memory but back in the Summer of 1999 we did it! Drivers installed and hardware settings tweaked, our computers could talk! But what to do? Why was this any better than before? Suddenly a barrier was broken down, a door opened, through the floodgates gushed forth a torrent of excitement.... We could play against one another. The only game we knew which supported this... GTA (download here). Not GTA II nor III, not Vice City nor San Andreas, just good old fashioned GTA! (which incedentally is now abandonware).

To some of you now wondering, why is that so good? Well let me put it like this. You could play computer games with one another, but you had to be enjoying two separate games and showing on another the amusing occurances in the run of the mill yadda yadda kill him, steal this, blow this up, complete with cut scenes, with lots of pre programmed sprites and fairly basic AI. You come within a certain range and they chase you and ultimately have one goal, to destroy your alter-ego on the screen. However with another person playing they can do much more amazing things like run away, or chase after you, climb on a roof and taunt you, fire rockets randomly into the abyss making driving peculiarly enthralling and to top it all off they're sat just a metre away screaming and shouting at you. Jeering and laughing. Offering cups of tea. And so from the small beginnings of a Null modem suddenly computers became a social occasion, much more than can be said for you reading this!

Kicking the Habit

I seem to be making a habit of posting very late at night. I think this is because I am fairly nocturnal, or maybe it's that when at work the last thing I want to do when I arrvie home is sit in front of a computer all evening although I do so occasionally, mostly with C&C Generals. It is very fun indeed! I know that there are pre-conceptions surrounding computer game playing nerds and most may be well founded but in my humble experience it is incredibly sociable. Many people may never have heard of a LAN party but I can assure you they are great fun, all you need is a few (legal) copies of a game and a few friends who enjoy playing it. I reminisce about fun times passed. The usual suspects of old friends from Secondary School, Ol, Omar, James.

I remember a time around 2000 maybe. On a quick scour of the "pre-google" internet a friend of mine, exactly who I am no longer sure, came across the cheapest yet least reliable (as it would later become aparent) method of connecting two computers. It was the infamous Null Modem. Where to find one and how to set the thing up, however, were not questions answered without a considerable voyage of discovery. In those days visiting a site like Altavista [History here] was unbelievable and exciting and any answers to any questions were not forthcoming as they are now. In fact we were seemingly doomed to plodding connections as it would later turn out that the Serial-Serial connection was incredibly slow as well as the afore mentioned set backs. A diagram of the pin to pin connection was somehow stumbled upon and in the technology building of school the first and only RS 232 was born, I'd like to think. I may still have it somewhere. If I do I'll post an image of it. From here the world opened up and I would love to go on but you're probably bored already. I'll tell you about it tomorrow...

Where have I gone?

Ok so you've probably got bored of waiting for me to get on and post something worth reading and I suppose I have got some stuff to tell you but to be quite honest it's pretty boring right now. You may have guessed, or know, that I'm back home in blighty and have been for about 3 weeks. I arrived home prematurely and the details of how I shall not go into, although I can divulge it was by plane. I am currently compiling an album to publish of all the photos I captured during my stay over there, I am plucking up the courage to upload them (which is going to take an age!) Right now I'm at my good friend's house leeching bandwidth from his connection. Anyways, gotta dash as I'm at work tomorrow...