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Further to the last entry's mention of Grillstock: I did finally pick up a few culinary tidbits toward the end of the day, from the good people of Chilli Seeds: a superbly tasty garlic chutney, a coriander pickle, their Dragon's Breath hot sauce (a Jamaican style sauce, with an amusingly slow start, sweet and tasty, before the punch hits), and their Pure Pain Paste, made of Bhut Jolokia peppers, weighing in somewhere in the region of 1m Scovilles. And a bit of their wonderful Teriyaki Wizard, except my friend wound up snagging the last bottle they had with them - but, they were kind enough to let me have the rest of the bottle they'd opened for sampling, for free. ^_^ Pure Pain does look like it'll be getting some use - I took advantage of it on Sunday, making up a hot teriyaki beef dish, tossing some in with ground beef, carrots, broccoli, and a yellow pepper, which turned out beautifully tasty and hot ("burns twice"). The garlic and coriander chutneys also go fantastically well with Cheddar and crackers, which I must resist. =:9

Want to help jharish with Project Nunway 4? If you're a fan of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and want to help bring some furriness to the proceedings, please do check it out. ^_^ By way of a taster, here's Project Nunway III last year.

The Whole Story is a comic anthology available without any DRM, with artists like Ryan Estrada, Ryan North, Zach Weiner, Shaenon Garrity, David Malki, and Erika Moen. And you get to name your price, though they're taking a leaf out of Kickstarter's book - pay more, and you get incremental bonuses. Is it worth it? Here's a preview, though quite large - at 42MB, be prepared for it not to download instantaneously, unless you're sitting on some revoltingly fast connection. (And payments are not via PayPal, but Gumroad - no registration required, just the magic numbers)

Breaking Out is the first in an experimental series of productions by the BBC - here, an audio play ("best experienced from the UK", and "performs best on Chrome using the Web Audio API, but should also work in Firefox, Opera and Safari through a fallback solution" ), on the basis of "perceptive media".

Saw David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis". ^_^ I shan't try to review it, but if you're expecting a conventional structure, don't even try here. =:D Needless to say, I loved it. It's not Fly-Cronenberg, but rather more Dead Ringers, where it's all about the people - or rather, just the central character. Toss in some David Lynch, and a tiny dash of nihilist Tarantino. It's a film that will (again, speaking personally) survive multiple viewings, as there's simply so much said, so many thoughts expounded, mostly worth consideration of their own. Having them delivered quite so densely isn't something you normally encounter in film, outside of the likes of Stalker.

In a more mainstream vein, The Awakening finally sees a limited US release. If you're up for a highly atmospheric, old school horror yarn - that is, entirely character-driven, with no gore - I can happily recommend it. Quite unsettling.

Wednesday was a particularly happy day, for one simple reason: peacefulness. ^_^ Rather than head into the usual office, I went into the library instead, and found quiet - on the top floor, away from the main parade. I could relax, think, concentrate, and work with so much more clarity than I usually know. It left me accomplished, and happy. (Wasn't quite so thrilled about one of my usual rabbiteering spots becoming a temporary car park for part of a small music festival, but I suppose it'll recover. I left the sultanas I'd brought in for the buns over at the nearer of the other spots I frequent. Whether or not it encourages them to hang around isn't really important, though it'd certainly be a bonus - it'll surely be an enjoyable variation from the norm)

Random bit of nifty biology: how the fairy wasp lost its neural nuclei. You see, they're quite remarkable creaures - being so very small, there's simply no room for normal neurons (and not many of those, either). Whilst a bee may have some 850,000, and even a fly some 340,000, these manage with a humble 7,400 or so - and yet, it manages all the functions required, in locating food, being able to fly, and finding a place to lay eggs.

I see Chuck E Cheese is getting a makeover: into a guitar-wielding rocker =:D The story doesn't touch on whether there'll still be costumes and/or animatronics, though I'd imagine there'd have to be some element, unless they went with just animated CG figures.

Bits and pieces are slowly being released by way of news of the next season of Doctor Who, with some fabulous casting news: there'll be Diana Rigg and her daughter, Rachel Stirling in a Mark Gatiss ep, and David Warner in another.

A nice prize, if you're a photographer: any size gallery wrap - and they go up to 30x40"! - if you win their Flickr contest on the theme of "Summer of Love". (US/Canada only, though I'd imagine there's no problem with having it sent along by a friend)

If you're looking for a good free field recording app, Blue FiRe works very nicely, judging by tonight's recording of a few songs by De Fuego, who did indeed rock it, acoustically - just two guitars (admittedly also via the pub's audio system), nothing else, but they made those things sing and stomp. Brilliant. Here's an example tune - as you'd expect of a recording made on a phone, it's hardly studio quality, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. Or, The Empty and Journey, over on YouTube, with them simply playing.

Meanwhile, for drums, there's the iPad-only Molten Drum Machine, which is soon to be replaced by One Red Dog's new app - so, to celebrate the transition, they're giving it away until the end of July, when it'll be removed from the store.

If you've ever thought new British houses are tiny, it's not merely a matter of perception: they're the smallest in Europe.

Five hints on shaking up your travel photography - definitely worth taking to heart. Nothing you don't know, at heart, but easily worth being reminded of. (Got any examples that demonstrate qualities as described?)

If the whole matter of the Higgs boson has left you a little perplexed, here's PhD Comics with a cartoon explanation into just what it is, and just how you go about detecting such particles. As for yesterday's Higgs Day discovery, John Ellis of CERN:
"There is no doubt that something very much like the Higgs boson has been discovered. The strengths of the signals observed independently by CMS and ATLAS are completely convincing, and they are supported by data from the Tevatron experiments CDF and D0.


Mm, I recall Google was taking a rather forceful approach with their software, particularly Google Earth, to the point where the only way to disable it was to replace the files responsible with nulls, then set them or that directory to have no write permissions, so it couldn't "repair" them and resume auto-updating. I do accept that it's a very good thing, for a company, to have the latest version out there as widespread as possible, as it obviously keeps stale bug reports from accumulating, and thereby a less buggy experience for people, but utterly removing any control did seem rather off-putting.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to work in the latest nightly of Safari - it brings me to a closed lift door, but that's as far as it goes, with nothing more heard, spontaneously or in response to clicks on the lift buttons or mousehole.

Early days, I suppose.=:/