I love cooking…

I love cooking, I’m not sure if I’m any good at it (you’ll have to ask my girlfriend) but I do enjoy it. There is something therapeutic about chopping, stirring, frying etc something in the kitchen. Now that I don’t live alone I don’t get to experiment with all the crazy things I come up, which is a pity as alot of those turned out rather good in the past.

I’ve always loved Jamie Oliver as a chef, not because of his recipes or anything like that… but because he had this attitude of anyone can do this, it doesn’t have to be rocket science and its ok to make a mess in the kitchen. If you watch any of his shows you’ll see that he actually ends up with flour on his shirt and his kitchen looking alittle bit of a mess, he sticks his hands in and gets them dirty and the whole time he’s cooking he looks like he’s having fun.?

If you watch Nigella Lawson’s cooking programs you’ll see that she often cooks in a fancy dress (I remember a red one she wore often) and she’ll make something that when us mere mortals cook it we would end up covered in flour from head to toe, she won’t have a spec on her.?Other shows annoy me because everything is “prepared before hand” so they just pour the bowl of chopped onions in, you don’t see the guy chopping them with tears in there eyes… so it feels a little “un-natural”.

While searching for a Jamie Oliver recipe I heard about (I only own one of his books… they a bit pricey) I stumbled across his website. It’s actually a very nice site, its got a few free recipes, some video and a ton of info. But whats really impressive is that they have a whole community built up round the site with people contributing there own recipe’s or changes to Jamie’s, and they have stories on there too about when they cooked something or the time it went wrong.

Guitar Hero II

Guitar Hero IISo I’ve been playing Frets on Fire occasionally on my PC and it’s pretty cool but it’s lacking “something”. Frets on Fire is a Open Source version of the game Guitar Hero. One of the biggest problems has been trying to use the keyboard as the guitar, it just doesn’t work.

So while wondering around the mall (I do this a lot it appears) I stumbled upon Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360, the cool thing about this is that the Xbox 360 uses plan USB controllers so “In theory” all I needed to do was buy the game+controller and get the controller to work on my PC. After purchasing it I’m not sure exactly what went through my mind, but on further wondering’s around the mall I noticed that Xbox 360’s were on special… and well yip you guessed it I became the proud new owner of a Xb0x 360.

Continue reading

Famous Friends

Christiaan KritzingerThe internet is a strange place… was having a discusion over IM (Instant Messaging, for those of you are new to this Internet thing) with a friend about all the guys we were in school and what happened to the people.

Anyway while I was having a black & white flashback moment reliving my youth, I decided to put a few of my friends names into Google to see if any robbed banks, became multi billionaires or became famous while I was attempting to get a life. So it doesn’t appear that anyone robbed any banks or made large sums of money… but at least one of us accomplished something that got them into Google.

A friend of mine from high school, Christiaan Kritzinger (although I knew him as Tiaan) actually recorded a CD and got it released and he’s got a MySpace page and in true MySpace fashion you can listen to his music on the page. Now I’m not exaclty a fan of Afrikaans music but the music isn’t bad and its kinda cool being able to say “I know this guy with a CD out”.

Now I just need the guys email address so that I can acquire a signed CD (I’ll pay for it, I’m not that cheap.) and I’m not creating a MySpace account just to say hi.

Cricket

Not that today’s Cricket has been any good, but if you want to keep up to date on the current cricket score but don’t have a Radio, TV etc. Go checkout http://www.cricbuzz.com it gives you the current score and a full commentary nicely typed out and it’s live too (although the radio seems to be a few minutes ahead of it.) I would love to know how the guys who do this type so fast.

I own a helicopter !! (or yet another toy…)

PicooZ HelicopterSo Saturday I took a trip down to Tygervalley Shopping Mall and as usual I took a trip to my favourite toy shop Peggity’s Toys. As you come in the door there’s a pile of these “helicopter things” but what caught my eye was the name “PicooZ” you see I had read about these things online they’re IR (Infra Red) controlled helicopters that are lightweight and designed for flying in doors. So I grabbed one and purchased it, it was only R 350.00 which isn’t too bad.

Let’s just say that this is the most fun I’ve had in along time.

Continue reading

Help I’m a Book-aholic

I enjoy reading and yes I have a library card, but I don’t have tons of free time so I prefer buying books so that I can read them on and off when I want to. I also like having a stock of books that I haven’t read yet so that when the mood strikes me or I can’t sleep or whateva I can grab a book and read it. I also like to have books on various topics so that if I feel like a sci-fi book I have one or if I’m looking for a murder mystery or a technical book I’ve got that too. If you click the Books option on the top menu you can see a list of the books I have, although there are a few that I haven’t captured yet.

Continue reading