10th Anniversary.

At the beginning of December it shall be 10 years since I started writing this blog. 

I set it up to basically have an output, online and act as an archive to things that I would have forgotten about over the years. Stuff like British Cable TV, Polish cartoons, Hardy Boys detective novels.  A love for the PSP and PS Vita consoles, and some Rom hacks that I've played and liked.

I have at times written reaction pieces to bad reporting on cacti and have received at least 1 comment that wasn't spam over the years. 

Looking at my earliest posts I really wanted it to be called Lobster Egg, in part derived from Roger Irrelavent in the Viz and essentially Davey Jones strips which speaks to my level of stupid. But it turned out that the name was taken by a food blog, which was a bummer.

I still don't know 100% where Tibbet, as in my name for a cat, came from. Pretty sure its Mrs. Kitten from the classic Smoke and Fluff but of course intensely corrupted. See also Mrs Nibble / Mrs Cobble from Blackberry Farm tales for the rabbit equivalent. 

It also seemed that I was a bit haphazard in my posting, putting pages up rather than every Sunday, like I do now.  

I was a proper hammer on feminism then, which would take Darkness Savior on Tumblr of all places to turn me on to the whole MRA / Skeptic community. I still like the news critic stuff like Tim Pool, Short Fat Otaku, Vee, The Britisher and even Sargon and Thunderf00t when they're not too cringy.

I added a twatter profile some two years ago and its brought me daily dogs, cats, game knowledge and left wing cunts galore to laugh at. 

Its bittersweet to look back at how the time has gone and that, and for once decided to do what every other cunt does when it advances in years. Adds a shitty retrospective post.

 

Lamb Update

We've been going through a load of old magazines hoping to see what can be thrown away and what can be scanned for posterity. As well as mags we've also taken to task a few old cassette decks too including a nice Hitachi that simply won't play tapes and in fact chewed up our lamb tape a few times before being dumped.

So what's on the tape then.  Well its mostly recipes of Lamb as I've said before its a collab with Colmans Mustard and  there is a special treat too.  For some reason half of side A has been taped over with an old episode of Watchdog, you can tell its old as it has Lynn Faulds Wood and John Stapelton on it, no Anne Robinson here.  Mostly its concerning about a holiday scam set up as prizes but never going through.  The other bits are apologies concerning a sex line mix up and viewers in Scotland having to wait to the early hours to see the show itself (its pre iPlayer so you'll have to tape it instead).

Apart from Watchdog, it mainly contains well lamb and recipes of lamb and such.  There are a few musical interludes mainly generic Greek and Far Eastern library music for recipes on kebabs and pilaf rice but the rest is spoken word.  I can imagine this would be good for cut ups as well as lamb recipe fanatics too, there's quite a lot of talk about meat and such as well as slits and stuff. Will have to dump the audio when I'm done with records in general, though that may be in 2066.

Here is the entire inlay in case it rings any bells and such.

Also this is the last time I type Lamb for ages.

Green Coke and bad Crisps

Was going to do a whole lot about a few junk tours I did including finally getting to Upminster but it was a total disappointment, the best thing there was Crazy Beat Records which I got a few nice things.  In fact apart from seeing a Kingfisher fly past down at the river today, the most fun I've had is finding that my local corner shop does Coke Life aka green Coke.

I've seen this about including some billboard ads, but never to actually buy in the regular can size.  Its unique selling point is that half of the sugar in it is replaced with Stevia sweetener instead of the aspartame based nonsense that is in Diet Coke.  So in the week we had the chance to get a can as it was available in our local corner shop.

My first impressions is this, its halfway to becoming Coke Zero, there is still some soul in there but something has gone very very wrong.  If you didn't know I absolutely despise Coke Zero or ball less soulless Coke as I call it. Its nowhere near as bad as that but its halfway there.  On my official chart of Coke, I rank it as this.
Vanilla Coke>Coke>Coke Life>Cherry Coke>Diet Coke>Coke Zero.

Walkers are doing their do us a flavour promotions again which is their excuse for unleashing more rancid flavours onto the world, link above if you must vote on something.
So far we have:
Hot dog and Ketchup,
Chip Shop Chicken Curry,
Cheesy Beans On Toast.
Pulled Pork in a sticky BBQ sauce
Ranch Raccoon
Sizzling Steak Fajita
Human Flesh

I've had most except Cheesy Beans as I've never liked Baked Beans in any incarnation let alone in crisp form. At the moment its neck and neck to find the worst of the bunch but so far its Rancid Raccoon by a long, long margin, coupling a strange initial taste that turns into something much, much viler. Its my stand out worst crisp ever.  Hot dog and Ketchup is probably next as it tastes of just ketchup and nothing else.
Bearable are Steak Fajita and Chip Shop Curry, the latter tasting exactly like the McCoys range of crisps but not ridged at all.  Steak Fajita I've had before or at least its flavour in other crisps so its not a shock.
Heads and Shoulders above the lot is Pulled Pork, seemingly named by Beavis and Butthead and is rather good, but then again I'm a sucker for bacon flavoured crisps so that it'll be nice is a no brainer.

I'd like to think that they'll retire these but its not as if they'll promote these to a full time flavour, who remembers the last lot of crisps they did, chances are if your out and about and see them on offer stay the hell away unless its the pulled pork ones.

Edit for completion sake we did have the cheesy beans flavour and they weren't bad a bit tomatoey and slightly cheesy, in fact just what you would expect really.

Prickly Pear and Mint Ramblings

This is a bit of a split post the first half is all about Linux Mint and the internet and the back half is all about Prickly Pears. Without further ado we'll begin.

Linux Mint and online.

In the week I decided to test something out, I've noted already here that I created a dual boot system with linux mint so you either have a choice of Windows XP or Mint, but so far its been a closed system gated off from the Internet and intermittently receiving product updates by USB stick.  What we wanted to do was link it up downstairs where our internet connection is and let it run wild online.  Noting that it was a bastard to do with either XP and Vista (my system is old so you'll excuse us that we don't have windows bastard 8 running) we were just going to test to see if it would actually recognise there was a system there.

Remarkably it did first time, so we decided to run the service centre and update linux as well as bother about with firefox which I've used for years.  Your default page is Linux mint which also gives you a janky search to go with it.  We also added adblock because the internet is hell without it, and decided to also see if you could download stuff and add it, turns out you can if you use terminal and know what distro you are running but if you are unsure just look for it in the service center.  If I ever get a new computer I'll be sure to run mint to see if I can at least find out how to get online as i'll know it works.

In other news It looks like the latest updates to  NI. Reaktor, Skanner and Drive seem to be win 7 or higher only. I put this here as a Vista user it seems that 5.8 is the last version for us.

Prickly Pear.

This summer has seen some weird things flower in  the conservatory.  For starters we had a good year a lot of Echinopsis flowered for the first time in ages, helped along with the long hot summer we had.  I also had this flower too.

Bud back in June

When we came back off of holiday  there was this bud waiting for us and we thought that would be the end of it.  It would remain that size and not do much, how wrong could you be.

Three inches in all.

As the summer wore on this is what it eventually turned into a big tomato red flower with its trademark sensitive stamens.  This is quite the result as opuntias don't really flower in the UK as they require massive amounts of space and time (and I guess light as well)* to do well.  Some are slow growing but most rocket up throwing out pads replete with vicious glochids that will snag anything that will come into reach, so you can see why they are neglected. 
*Apart from that they are easy to grow and are remarkably cold hardy, we grow without winter heat and have never lost an Opuntia to cold. 

Anyway a few months later after the flower (it lasted one afternoon) had died and a green fruit was left behind I ventured back into the conservatory to see that it had coloured up and was now a deep purple.

The sad chumbero (size 1 inch).

After some deliberation I decided to take it off as it wouldn't get any bigger and stuff it into the kitchen first removing any stubborn glochids and other junk.  It stood there for about a week before I had the heart to eat it. 

All prepared.

The actual pulp and seeds itself was quite odd, it tasted a lot like a plum slightly sour and with a massive amount of juice.  The seeds themselves were bullet hard and are now back in the conservatory on a paper towel but I have to say it was quite pleasant.  The juice itself reminds me of beetroot and with all the attendant caveats about beetroot juice (it stains).  I wonder if it could be used as a dye my fingers are still purplish from cutting up the fruit, maybe someone with access to a lot of prickly pears and doesn't mind fingers like a pincushion could try it out.  I'll wait till the spring to sow the remaining seeds and see what I get (they will need chitting and preparing before sowing as like I say they're bullet hard).

Food and drink.

So its happened Google has morphed my entire blog, Youtube channel and unwanted child of a Google Plus page into one hideous shambolic whole.  Its not as if I wasn't warned but now I have one log in to rule them all and be damned if you want differently.  Also Youtuber channel owners look in your channel for the subscribers sidebar and click get Email notification for all you sub to as the new way is only frequent fliers will be updated meaning you'll miss out on all of you updates.  Its a horrible way of working I know but at least this way you'll get an Email notification when someone updates.

Food and Drink.

We don't really cook up stuff, I can make breakfast at a pinch so this will be a few recipies for soft drinks  with an occasional plea for making products that do not exist. 

Drinks.

Due to an ambivalence toward Alcohol this is strictly drinks for teetotallers and non diabetics due to frightening amounts of sugar.  We picked up a few cans of coconut juice at the weekend and a thoroughly vile sugarcane juice from an unofficial poundshop.  Really mixed up it looked like grey water from the bath and it really didn't help adding 7UP as a mixer.  Hopefully the coconut version of this will be much better, when mixed as we still have a few 500ml bottles left.

My favourite version of this is just plain coconut juice and cream soda which is heavenly.  There really isn't a straight version of coconut soda although such a thing must exist somewhere maybe this dude has some.
(hint yes he does.)

The pound shop also had cans of drink as well including the lovely pokka melon milk and a few other concentrate stuff like an orange drink version (don't care for orange) and a mango one which is nice.
Also I've had Korean drinks in small cans including a nice grape juice drink with added grapes and occasionally Sujeonggwa. See below.

Made with Persimmons

Finally because I'm obviously some sort of manchild we have Frosties for breakfast (Frosted Flakes for non UK citizens) it offers basic nutrition with the added hit of sugar.  I had the crazy idea of adding raisins or even currants to the flakes and as an afterthought reaching the bottom of the current box decided to bulk it up with Fruit and fibre.  Not too sure about the peanuts but it actually works with the added raisins to it.