It’s Friday already! I can’t believe how quickly these weeks go. I still haven’t really recovered from the cold I had last week – still get dizzy at random, like I did earlier while making some Beetroot Chutney. I’m quite looking forward to it cooling down and setting, so I can try some. Looks quite yummy. My hands are a bit pink now though.

Anyway, on Sunday Daisy and I fly out from Bournemouth to Barcelona. On Tuesday I have a meeting over there with one of my new projects. Hopefully the meeting will give me some idea of what I’m actually supposed to be doing. The main thing, though, is that we’re going to have a nice few days holiday over there, which should be nice. We’re going to stay in Barcelona the whole time, but we’ll travel out to see some places outside of the city, because I find cities quite wearing after a day or two. Besides there’ll be more to photograph outside of the city!

Yesterday we spent much of the afternoon finishing shredding the trees that we cut down ready to site our chicken house.
Here it is:

[photopress:DSC_3759.jpg,thumb,centered]

My sister is going to get some chickens soon, hopefully and our smallholding will have started.
You can see in the background the logs that couldn’t be shredded. They’re currently sitting on top of the old vegetable patch, which I was hoping to get out and dig over today, adding some horse manure. Unfortunately, though, it’s raining but according to weather.com it’s supposed to clear up this afternoon, so I might still get chance.

A quick recipe for a very yummy ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s used to make an ice-cream called Chubby Hubby, which was peanut butter icecream containing chocolate covered pretzels and it was absolutely my favourite. However, Ben and Jerry’s (like most other food manufacturers) thought it would be a good idea to discontinue my favourite flavour.

Anyway, last weekend my parents were coming around for a roast dinner and I was trying to think up a nice dessert. I made a nice pear crumble, based on an apple crumble recipe I had (I’ll post that some other day), and I wanted to make some ice-cream. I noticed the peanut butter in the cupboard and an idea was born. I made it again tonight, and it is just as yummy, so if you have an ice-cream maker and you like peanut butter, try this one:

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp (100g) smooth peanut butter
• 100g caster [white] sugar
• 150g (150ml) milk [I use skimmed]

1. Place all the ingredients in a big bowl, and mash at first with a fork.
2. Use a whisk to continue the mashing until you have a peanut butter milk-shake in your bowl (this might be nice in itself)
3. Poor into your cold ice-cream maker, and leave until thick
4. Eat and enjoy

Yum!

I’m off to London with work tomorrow. We’re going to see the Land Registry and will hopefully come back with some of their data that we are trying to integrate into a bunch of the government’s other data. Fingers crossed.

It’s meme day.

Tagged by Biscuits

Perfect Lover in 8 parts

1. Laid back – uptight people wind me up
2. Not selfish – I try to think of others as much as I can, and that’s how I’d like my lover to be
3. Fun – Must like to have a good laugh, and if that happens to be when I’m telling a joke, all the better
4. Clever – I love learning stuff, so it’s great to be able to learn stuff I don’t know. I also like teaching stuff, so I guess they have to put up with my random trivia.
5. Cuddly – I can’t be doing with no stick insects
6. Hairy – I like long hair on da heed.
7. Faithful
8. Likes food – Eating is a past-time many more people should share

Just in case you’re reading this, and you fit my shopping list, I’m afraid the shopping list is dated 2001, and the goods were received in the same year, in perfect condition. Daisy is still that way.

Memes are supposed to be passed on, but I don’t know enough people to pass it on. So If you’re reading this and want to do it, please feel duly tagged.

The 4×4 Meme

4 jobs

1. Computer Programmer at GPT in Poole
2. Computer Programmer (sorry, “Research Fellow”) at University of Southampton
3. Website Designer
4. Photographer at my friend’s wedding (and at his sister’s wedding come August)

4 films I like – always changing, but here’s my current list:

1. Monsters Inc.
2. Minority Report
3. Once Upon a Time in America
4. Whale Rider

2 places I have lived

1. Penllegaer, Swansea, Wales
2. Wimborne, Dorset, England

4 favourite TV shows

1. Mind Games
2. CSI
3. Friends
4. Stricty Come Dancing

4 places I’ve been on holiday

1. Japan (Hiroshima, Kyoto, Otsu and Osaka)
2. America (California – LA, Death Valley, Yosemite, San Francisco)
3. Denmark (Jutland – Copenhagen, Fredensborg, Helsingor)
4. To Sea! (Our honeymoon cruise – Barcelona, Toulon, Corsica, Florence, Elba, Palma)

4 websites I visit daily

1. My Photoblog – to check for comments
2. My Ebay – to check for things I’m watching ending
3. Google – can anyone get by without visiting Google daily?
4. Lots of other people’s photoblogs.

4 of my favourite foods

1. Custard
2. Chips (or ‘Fries’ if you prefer)
3. Anything chocolate-hazelnut
4. Ben and Jerry’s Icecream

How terribly healthy.

4 places I’d rather be right now

1. In bed (not feeling very well – and preferably snuggled up to Daisy)
2. Where-ever Daisy is
3. On a cruise
4. On a smallholding in rural Wales

This meme is also supposed to be passed on, but I refer the honourable reader to my previous comment.

Your results:You are An Expendable Character (Redshirt)

Since your accomplishments are seldom noticed, and you are rarely thought of, you are expendable. That doesn’t mean your job isn’t important but if you were in Star Trek you would be killed off in the first episode you appeared in.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

All this week I’ve been feeling pretty crap. Sunday evening saw the onset of a cough which by Monday had turned into a cold. The only good thing about it was that I haven’t had much of a runny nose, although my sinuses have been packed full which means my eyes have been hurting. I have stayed in bed most days and slept long hours. The cold’s hanging around still, giving me the shivers when I’m not dosed up on Paracetamol, so I suspect I’ll be home from work all week. I think I must’ve swallowed someone else’s germs when Daisy and I went swimming last Thursday. I shan’t be going this Thursday, but I might go and watch, perhaps.

I had a meeting at work today. It has been in the pipeline for sometime that I was going to be posted to a new project in the new year, and today I was told the outcome of management’s decisions.

I had two possible projects that I was going to be working on. One is called e-HealthAgents, an EU funded project with lots of partners in Spain. It’s based around building a computer system for allowing medics to investigate brain tumours using two new techniques called MRS (Magnetic Resonance Spectrometry) and MAS (Magic Angle Spectrometry – how does that work? It’s magic!). The deliverable for the project is a system that, at the end, can be brought up to industrial quality.

The second is called Open Knowledge; another EU funded project. It’s based about building another computer system that has peer-to-peer knowledge sharing for the investigations of bioinformatics stuff. Not entirely sure myself, yet, but it’s something like that.

So, which one did I get posted to? Both.

I am to spend 50% of my time on e-HealthAgents, and 50% of my time on Open Knowledge. This is actually pretty cool because it means I won’t get too bored with one or other of the projects, and parts of them are similar enough that if I work carefully, I can programme stuff only once and use it in both.

However, I’m also working on another project already, and I will continue to work on that project as it’s a completely separate thing. I’m expected to take about 10% of my time on that… so that will be 110% then.

Very soon I shall probably be doing another website for someone at University (in my spare time – but getting paid!), and in March (ooh, that’s next month) I take the task of renovating another website (which I think looks pretty good already). It’s all going to be busy busy busy; but it will bring in money for us to do up our house a bit.