If you want to play with the (3/4’s done) Wii Fit high score thingy, drop me a note or post a comment (fill in your regular e-mail in the e-mail field, it won’t display) letting me know what username you want. Only folk I know for the moment, so don’t go giving out the URL.
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Positive equity (in theory)
We’re starting the 5th year in our ‘new’ house (we bought it and moved in in 2003, around August if I recall). We bought the house with a more-than-100% mortgage. We didn’t have any money for a deposit (we were renting, no plans to buy, until our landlady wanted to move back in) and we had no spare cash to cover all the costs and paying moving firms, etc. So we borrowed more than the house was worth from the mortgage company. In those days they were eager to lend us the cash.
Assuming the value of our house now is probably the same as it was 5 years ago (it went up for a bit and then has probably fallen again in the last year) we’re into positive equity now. We’ve paid enough off the mortgage and associated unsecured loan that we now owe less than the value of the property (hopefully).
This may have happened earlier, I may have just not noticed on our mortgage statements, but it’s still a pretty good feeling knowing that there’s a good chance we’re in the black on our house after having little choice but to be hugely in the red.
While we still have an overdraft I don’t want and more credit card debt than I’d like, it is another slow step in the right direction (since paying off our other unsecured loan recently).
Friday at last
It’s been a long old week, but we finally made it to Friday. I need to start doing more than 30 minutes on the Wii Fit, because I’m not out of breath after 30 now like I was at the start. Or, start mixing it up a bit more (I tend to do mostly Aerobic stuff) and throw in some more Yoga.
I’m working on a little Wii Fit high score web-app thingy so that the folk I know with Wii Fit’s can see who’s the champion at Super Hula, but work over the last couple of days ate into my evening free time so it didn’t make much progress last night.
I think we may be about to start tabletop roleplaying again with Chris and Christine which would be fantastic, it’s always going be tougher at our age due to kids, jobs, lives, but hopefully we’ll be able to get together twice a month at least and get some games in. Really looking forward to that (probably 4th Edition D&D at this stage).
I was reading some stuff about diabetes and the HbA1c test, and it suggested that morning glucose readings (basically, fasting readings) should give a good indication of where you are with your blood sugar control. If the morning readings are high (consistently) then you’re probably not getting enough drugs, or your control is out, or you’re eating too much (or a combination). Mine tend to be pretty good, I don’t check them all the time (it doesn’t really help to do that with type 2 diabetes), and at 4.8mmol/l this morning I was quite happy. I had some low GI bread toast from a small bakery chain which I’ve not tried before, it was ok. I’ll check in a bit and see how it affects my sugar, I had four slices so I should get a decent indication if it’s going to be worth buying or not. (In fact, I just noticed it’s a couple of hours since I ate it, so off I go to finger-prick).
Hmm, 8.4mmol/l is a little higher than I’d like, I guess I’ll need to stick to less slices and/or the Bergen low GI bread although the strong flavour in that had started getting to me so I needed a break from it.
meh then it went mad
Work was mad, had some major issues and ended up working on it until 10pm.
Bad food day /sigh. You don’t want to know what I ate for my evening meal (at 9:30pm).
I am Legend(arily Cynical)
Oh dear,
Yet Warner Bros. has $584,151,304 reasons to bring Neville back for another I Am Legend, and today they announced plans to do just that, with Smith, director Francis Lawrence, and producer, Akiva Goldsman all returning. How so? Are you ready to say the magic word?
Prequel.
Yes, they’re making a prequel to the movie that butchered the book ((except you know how these things work, and it may never happen, all disclaimers apply, standard caveats, etc.))
Also, looks like it might be a blogful day with 3 posts already and it’s not even 9am yet. Sorry.
Bacon Cob!
So I’m at work (at 8am) and I’m having a bacon cob.
I’m nervous about a pretty big change I’m working on today, needed to be in early to prep, and decided I’d treat myself to one (or probably two) bacon cob(s), rather than rushing to make breakfast at home.
Of course, I ended up being awake from 4:45am anyway due to Bubbles and then not being able to get back to sleep (due to above nerves). But by then it was too late, I was set on a bacon cob.
Avast!
There’s a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie ‘in the works’. Johnny Depp is signed up (he’s going to be busy), but that’s all I can find so far (although it’s early, and I’m not looking very hard).
Depp is also going to turn up as The Lone Ranger (Jerry Bruckheimer) and the Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland – Tim Burton).
edit: Aha, more detail here.
Walt Disney Studios held a massive event today at the Kodak Theatre in LA, during which the Studios’ chairman, Dick Cook, made a string of announcements about their upcoming movies over the next few years.
And Johnny Depp was at the heart of it all.
and
That Depp will return as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean 4.
• That he will star as The Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s next movie, Alice In Wonderland.
• Neither of those were huge surprises, but the next one was. Boy, was it.For Depp has signed on to star as Tonto in a movie version of The Lone Ranger, which will be produced by Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy
Here’s the official press release,
From: Stan Nicholls – Chairman, DGLA Steering Group
Deborah J. Miller – Awards Administrator.PRESS RELEASE: 22/09/08:
We are delighted to announce that preparations are underway to present the inaugural ‘David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy’ for the best Fantasy novel of the year (2008). The Award has the official support of Stella Gemmell, and has been instigated by friends and professional colleagues to celebrate David’s life and literary legacy.
Nominations are currently being sought from Editors of every major genre Fantasy list for full-length novels, in the English language, first published in 2008. The nominated novels must be deemed Fantasy in the spirit of David Gemmell’s own work. All nominated work will be added to the ‘Longlist’ – which will then be voted upon by the reading public on the Award website.
Voting will not be closing until March 2009, which will ensure readers a chance to read, and vote upon, all the nominees. The top 5 novels will go forward to the Shortlist phase, with the winner decided by a panel of Fantasy experts (to be announced on the website). The Award trophy – a replica of ‘Druss the Legend’s’ famous battleaxe, Snaga – will finally be presented in June 2009, at a ceremony in London. It is expected that the DGLA will soon become the most prestigious Award for authors working within the genre Fantasy field.
For any further information, please check the website for frequent updates: http://GemmellAward.com
Or, contact the Awards Administrator on:
Admin@GemmellAward.com
Abort, Retry, Ignore?
Loved this post over at Technologizer, certainly brought back some memories.
I saw this error a lot (from the article),
13. Abort, Retry, Fail? (MS-DOS)
In many ways, it remains an error message to judge other error messages by. It’s terse. (Three words.) It’s confusing. (What’s the difference between Abort and Fail?) It could indicate either a minor glitch (you forgot to put a floppy disk in the drive) or catastrophe (your hard drive had died). And by forcing you to choose between three options, none of which is likely to help, it throws the problem back in your face.
Ah, the glory days with my Amstrad PC 1512, dual 5 1/2inch floppy drives, and a 21MB hard-card.
Interwebnet tradition …
Blogging about food! We bought a bunch of Good Food magazine recipe books from Amazon, and we’re very pleased with them. I actually bought them for two reasons, 1. size and 2. one-pot-cooking.
The books are small, sort of a sqaure shape, near A5 but shorter and fatter. Which makes them easy to store in our tiny, cluttered and space-lite kitchen. Secondly, they do a one-pot-cooking recipe book and I’m all about the one-pot-cooking. Each of the recipe books has 101 recipes, some of them look a little, er, curious, and there’s some overlap. For example, we got the one-pot-cooking one which shares some recipes with the noodle and pasta one, but it’s a small amount of overlap and the books really do seem useful.
We’ve already cooked a bunch of stuff from them, changing our diet in the last three weeks from ‘same old rubbish’ to ‘a bit scary but fresh stuff’ almost overnight. We’ll probably settle down to a few recipes we really like, but the books have provided some much needed inspiration for us recently. They don’t really work well with Grete’s diet because I’m terrible at serving single portions, but as we get more used to them we’ll either cook less, or just serve less and hopefully they’ll help. For me, as long as I’m careful about which ones we pick and their carb content they should be perfect, if I can avoid eating three portions worth.
Tonight I’m making the Chilli from the one-pot-cooking one, which feeds eight, so there’s going to be plenty to freeze for lunches. I love Chilli, and it’ll be great to learn a new recipe for cooking my own with fresh spices rather than packet mixes. I’m blogging this during the ’30 minutes of simmering’. I know that good chilli’s need to cook for ages, but we really don’t have ages unless I cook it days in advance and we didn’t. But it’ll be awesome for lunch tomorrow at work, and fantastic for keeping in the freezer.
Yesterday we made Lemon Chicken and Broccoli, which was just superb (from the noodle book, or maybe the meals for two). One of the things we’ll need to get used to is the difference between truly fresh sauces and ingredients and our half-way-house packets or jars. The lemon sauce was light, fresh and tangy. Takes quite a bit of preparation although I guess that’ll get quicker with practice, but very little time to cook.
Other dishes we’ve made,
- Goulash – totally not what I was expecting, may have to play with this recipe a bit to get a dish we eat more often. It was much more like a soup than I expected. Was better a few days later for lunches.
- Vegetable Paella – was ok, not really my cup of tea (what, no meat?) but I think Grete really enjoyed it. May mix it up with some chicken.
- Toad in the Hole (from the low fat book) – ruined this, although Grete managed to eat it. Just didn’t get the oven hot enough and it was more gloop than yorkshire pudding. May try again, liked the Mustard and Thyme mix in the batter.
We got the following books,
- 101 One-pot Dishes
- 101 Pasta and Noodle Dishes
- 101 Meals for Two
- 101 Low-fat Feasts
- 101 Cakes and Bakes
And may pick up a few of the others as well!
edit: And be thankful, because I almost starting taking pictures of the food, beginning with the goulash but decided against it!