I got a new lens – a Sigma 70-300 APO Macro II – so I’ve been trying it out. So far, I’m very impressed – it’s a great big heavy thing, but the optical quality seems very good, and without the vignetting I’ve seen with some telephoto zooms. I went around Manchester today and got a few nice pictures with it, which you can see here, should you be interested in that sort of thing. I’ve been wanting to get some geometric architecture type pictures for a while now, but lacking a telephoto lens meant that I always got extraneous detail in the picture, which interrupted the smooth, clean geometric look I was aiming for. I think these ones, though, have come out very well.

It would seem that this is my 100th entry. Yay me, then.

It’s true. Whilst it’s technically in Chesire, it comes under the jurisdiction of “Halton Borough Council”, or somesuch. It spoils the nice, clean, upper-middle-class money-friendly feel that the rest of Cheshire so revels in. Frankly, I can’t blame Cheshire too much for not wanting it; whilst it claims to be an old Victorian market town, the truth is that there are only about three actual Victorian buildings left in the place (one of which is, in fact, our old office) and those are falling apart and suffering from a severe case of pigeon infestation (true story: before I joined the company, the ceiling of the top floor gave way one night. Everyone came in the following morning to find a room full of pigeons – and their associated excrement – that had been residing in the loft for the last 6 months). Most of Runcorn was built towards the end of the New Town era. You probably have a fairly good idea of what that means, therefore: stacks of council estates, a horribly misplaced shopping centre thing and an excitingly “modern” road layout – including roads only for buses (the idea being that you can get anywhere in Runcorn on public transport – which is patently untrue) and an expressway system which makes Spaghetti Junction look like a one-way street. We once sent someone 20-odd miles around the outskirts of the town rather than try and give them directions as to how to drive through it. True story.

Daily Mail Runcorn edition

Runcorn got itself a small portion of fame courtesy of the BBC comedy series, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, which purported to be set in the town. This was patently untrue. No-one ever stole a car, wore their shellsuit tucked into their socks, got pregnant at 14, had a boyfriend called “Darren” or “Tyrone”, or hung around with a group of identical clones on the highstreet, furtively smoking their stolen fags whilst bunking off school. Sure, they used a few shots of the Bridge and the High Street and that, but the fact is, you couldn’t actually make a programme with characters you remotely cared about if you wanted to set it in Runcorn, because you’d basically have to have a bunch of shellsuit wearing pikey dolescum who spend all day on the sofa whilst watching Sky One and eating Pringles.

On the plus side, however, there’s a good chippy in the town centre and it’s handy for the M56, which is useful if you want to, say, get away from the place in a hurry.

Oh, and an accident at the chemical plant a few years back rendered a large portion of the west side of the town uninhabitable. It’s a nice town, really.

Orisinal by Ferry Halim is a collection of nice games and flash toys. They’re really well made, and all of them make you want to go “awwww” a lot and hug someone. I like Hydrophobia – “The little frog who can’t swim” – and the Pond. Those ducks are far too cute for their own good.

I’m really in the mood to watch Amelie now…

A cursory search of my cupboard in the kitchen reveals the following:

• No bread – but 750g Hovis Strong White Bread Flour, dried yeast, and a bit of sugar and salt
• No pasta – but 500g Organic Pasta Flour, a couple of eggs in the fridge and a pasta maker machine thingy.
• No curry paste – but bags of coriander, cumin, paprika, turmeric, cloves, fennel seeds, bay leaves, cinnamon, methi seeds and a whole stack of other stuff.
• No soup – but a whole load of carrots, potatoes, onions, vegetable stock, etc.

Are we spotting a trend here? I dunno; it somehow feels wrong if I buy any kind of ready meal – I’d rather get a takeaway than buy, say, a premade sauce in a jar or ready-made pizza from Asda, or something, and I’d much rather make my own than get a takeaway. Amongst my most prized possessions are a pizza stone, a fantastic heavy-bottomed frying pan, a garlic press and a great set of chef’s knives. Many people may balk at the fact I paid 20quid for what is effectively a circular slab of unglazed pottery, but so far as I’m concerned, that pizza stone is one of the best things I ever bought.

The weird part of it is that when I came to Manchester as a student, just over 6 years ago, I could barely cook supernoodles. The range of food I would eat barely stretched beyond bacon sandwiches. Yet now, I get excited about walking round the supermarkets in Chinatown, looking at the huge array of (to western tastes) bizarre and exotic ingredients and imagining the stunning tastes as yet undiscovered; I love wandering around delis, trying the different types of European sausages and cheeses, in search of the next taste explosion. I harbour deep-seated desires to move to France almost entirely because of the food markets.

A lot of this change has to do with the fact that I went into self-catering halls at Uni and, after that, straight into a house; after I left home, I was entirely reliant on my own skill with a knife and saucepan – if I hadn’t learnt how to cook, I’d have starved. And never one to do things by halves, I figured if I was going to learn how to cook, I should do it properly – not just how to read the instructions on the back of a packet of noodles; after all, it was just chemistry, when you got down to it, and I’d already got an A-level in that.

Early experiments weren’t always succesful – my family will bear testament to the horror that was my first attempt at a balti – but over time, I think (and other people seem to agree) that I’ve become Not Bad At All at this whole cooking lark. And I enjoy it, too. In fact, there are only two real disadvantages – first is that when, on the occasions when I get home from work late, and I can’t be bothered cooking, and I look in the cupboard for something to snack on, there’s nothing in there which I can eat after anything less than half an hour’s preparation time; and secondly, cooking for my girlfriend isn’t a special occasion thing, it’s a couple-of-times-a-week thing (to be fair, she returns the favour, too) – which means that if I want to do anything food-related for a birthday or something, it involves going out somewhere, which can get a bit expensive after a point.

Damn, I’m hungry now.

(and, if I’m being completely honest, the actual reason I have no bread or pasta is that I’ve run out and not got round to buying any more; although the bit about the pasta maker is true, and I can make a mean fresh tagliatelle)

Now on the gallery, not one, not two, but three whole new sets of pictures. There’s some new black and white stuff, a few pictures from Manc Blogmeet2, and some pictures of a sunset (the same one was captured by jane from a different part of Manchester.)

Enjoy 🙂

This is a great idea. Respect to Tycho and Gabe for this one.

Once, when I was little, my Grandma and Granddad took me took McDonalds. I’d never been before. Being young and innocent and lacking in tastebuds, once I’d finished the meal, I said: “Gosh, Grandad, that was ever so nice! It must have cost you an awful lot of money!”.

My Granddad, being a bit canny, made a show of looking in his wallet for some money, and then turned to me and said “Oh no! We haven’t got enough money to pay for it! We’ll all have to go and wash the dishes in the kitchen.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I espied one of the cleaners wiping down one of the tables, and, bold as brass, pointed at her and shouted “Didn’t she have enough money to pay for her food either, Granddad?”.

So, last night Peter and myself journied over to Leeds to form part of the biggest audience ever for a recording of I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue. I’m not going to attempt to describe the show to those of you who haven’t heard it before, because you really need to hear it yourself; suffice to say, though, that it’s even funnier in real life. Yes, we were all blown away by the gorgeous Samantha, dazzled by the incredible technology of the new super-twist-LCD-enhanced Laser Display Board, and treated to not one but two world class games of Mornington Crescent – the first of which was won by Ross Noble in his first ever public exhibition game; an astounding feat by any measure, given the subtle complexities of this deeply intellectual and thoughtful game.

In addition to the two editions of ISIHAC, we were also cajoled into being a crowd of 80,000 school children for a sketch Jon Naismith is preparing (no, we had no idea what it was about), and forced to sit through the recording of four separate trailers for the I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Christmas Carol special. A true feast of comedy; I haven’t laughed so much in ages. I’m still grinning to myself now, in fact.

All hail Radio 4 🙂