Homebaked: Cookies in the car

Did you know that you can bake biscuits in your car? Me neither.

It’s summer in the US so the US Lifehacker is featuring great tips for "surviving the heat".

Here’s a car cookie recipe (if you don’t just want to buy pre-mixed cookie dough)… here’s the original source of this baked goodness.

Car-Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, soft
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

July 15, 2009

Would you like salt with that?

My WebSalt article about the Greens is now up. You should go over there, read it, and argue it out with me in the comments… It’s much more balanced than my regular blogging fodder because it’s not polemic – it’s balanced… I hope.

“But there is much in their policy platform to celebrate – an Australian Christian Lobby media release issued prior to the 2008 election praised the Greens for their strong stance on climate change, refugees, overseas aid, work life balance and poverty. These are important issues – and should be serious concerns for biblical Christians.” “The criteria that determine an individual’s political preference will come down to personal convictions – that’s the fundamental freedom offered by a liberal democracy. So voters need to decide for themselves whether caring for the poor should be the government’s concern or the church’s? Or whether we should impose a Christian ethical framework on non-believers? Can we vote for a party that purposefully pursues an easing of restrictions in the circumstances surrounding the termination of the lives of unborn children? Just how much of a concern is the environment?”

July 15, 2009

Five types of bloggers

I’ve been thinking a bit about the nature of blogging. I love blogging, and I love reading blogs. It seems to me that in most of the spheres in which I read blogs there are just five types of blogger.

These spheres – if you’re interested – are (on the basis of the names of categories in my Google Reader subscriptions) – People, Christianity, Coffee, How To, Humour, Gadget, Bargains, Web, and News.

The five types of blogger are “The Creator”, “The Curator”, “The Aggregator”, “The Commentator”, and “The Journaller.” There are probably more – and some blogs are mixes of both – I think I’m probably a mixture of all three.

The Creator

The Creator is perhaps the most exciting kind of blogger – they put up new material, their own thoughts, pictures, products, designs and concepts. They are read for their brilliance and because they supply ideas that keep the blogosphere afloat through generating spin off discussions and things that people want to link to.

The Curator

The Appreciator is a blogger who collects the best bits of thoughts and things from around the blogosphere and collates them – different to “The Aggregator” in that their topics can be wide and varied “The Appreciator” tends to provide a picture of themselves based on what it is they curate.

The Aggregator

Like the Appreciator but with a much more defined scope – Aggregators focus on a particular topic and go looking around the interwebs for material along a theme – in many cases they’ll be creators/aggregators providing their own content but more often featuring things from elsewhere.

The Commentator

Commentators are a bit like Journallers but they’re more opinionated – and more likely to make comment on current events than on their own circumstances. Some provide entertaining observations on life around them (rather than their own lives).

The Journaller

Journallers use their blogs as a journal – they don’t tend to care if people are reading or not and their content is usually of a reflective, personal or ranty nature and based on day to day life.

Journallers are also the most likely to be guilty of oversharing – generally because they’re not necessarily expecting readers, and if they are they don’t really care about maintaining readership.

What type of blogger do you think you are? Have I missed any types?

 

July 15, 2009

Don’t get tied to your desk

This is funny. I’m not sure it will work in this size – but it made me laugh lots – and I found it here.

July 14, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: Perils of Gaming

We’ve all read stories about Chinese gamers who die mid session (because they forget to eat) – but here’s a lesser known gaming ailment – First Person Shooter Disease – or Duke Nukem’s Disease. Be careful.

July 14, 2009

A bunch of links – July 14, 2009

July 14, 2009

Men are better at…

Music. Apparently. Cop this playa haters… Triple J run a competition to track down the best 100 songs of all time. They make the process democratic… and bam. No female artists. In fact, very little female presence at all.

The SMH is running a left-wing fuelled paranoid condemnation of the countdown (or the voters… well not really, it’s more an opinion piece bemoaning the results) – and yet the facts don’t lie. Males are superior.

However, as the countdown progressed, something sinister emerged: of the 100 tracks that ended up comprising the list, there were no female artists. Not even “equal but different”. Lets see you artsy lefties trying to condemn the church on gender roles now…

The only women to appear in any notable capacity were The White Stripes’ drummer Meg White (Seven Nation Army, number 20), Massive Attack guest vocalists Elizabeth Fraser (Teardrop, 22) and Shara Nelson (Unfinished Sympathy, 93), Pixies bassist Kim Deal (Where Is My Mind, 29), Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy Wretzky (1979, 35; Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 51; Today, 78), and Pulp keyboardist Candida Doyle (Common People, 81). And that’s it. Female artists with a history of solid Triple J airplay disappeared from the proceedings: Frente, P. J. Harvey, Tori Amos, Hole, Missy Elliott, Garbage, The Mavis’s, Bjork and Missy Higgins. They were all, to borrow Maya Arulpragasam’s stage name, M.I.A.

July 14, 2009

Sans comic sans

Comic Sans was a font designed with a very specific purpose in mind – and it quickly outlived that usefulness.

If you use it regularly – and particularly in “professional” documents or presentations – please cease and desist.

If, like me, you’re frustrated by the use of this abominable font – visit bancomicsans.com and join the cause.

July 14, 2009

Time Machine

Windows Live Writer apparently thinks we’re in the future. Some posts have now reappeared in their natural chronological order.

Windows Live Writer is really handy. You should check it out (if you haven’t already started using it).

July 14, 2009

Addiction

91%How Addicted to Blogging Are You? I’m pretty addicted to blogging. Apparently. How about you? Find out.

July 14, 2009

Cartoons in real life

Ben posts Peanuts comics on Thursdays. They’re a fun reminder of days flicking through Snoopy comics and playing the Snoopy Game on the Amiga.

Well, this post should excite him greatly – a real life Charlie Brown – courtesy of a Mr Tim O’Brien – who produced this for an exhibition entitled “Monsters”. It’s great.

Another artist name Pixeloo – or whose site is named Pixeloo – has put together a bunch of “real life” cartoon (and game) characters… they’re kind of freaky.

July 14, 2009

Naming Rights (and wrongs)

A new “study” has found that names count. It’s pretty much the same theory expounded on in detail in Freakonomics – that people with dumb names will be picked on, or come from dumb families – and these environmental factors will cause them to grow up pretty screwed up. The study found that:

“Boys with unpopular, girlish or uncommon names often are ridiculed by peers, come from families of low socioeconomic status and face discrimination in the workforce based on a preconceived bias about their names, according to the study, which analysed more than 15,000 names.”

According to the SMH article the top 10 bad-boy names are:

  1. Alec
  2. Ernest
  3. Garland
  4. Ivan
  5. Kareem
  6. Luke
  7. Malcolm
  8. Preston
  9. Tyrell
  10. Walter

July 14, 2009

15 and a half minutes of fame

I may have extended Corey Worthington’s 15 minutes of fame by referencing him in this letter I wrote to The Australian – but then he went and got booked for speeding and made the news by himself. My letter was a response to a stupid piece by Phillip Adams suggesting young people should get to vote because his 16 year old daughter is smarter than the average voter. My letter was edited slightly to fit in the space available so the second bit seems to be a bit of a non sequitur. 

July 14, 2009

List of Lists

I have written a lot of list posts in the last two days. Here’s a list of list posts. It’s the last such list. Normal services will be resumed shortly, I have hundreds of pieces of oddness just waiting to be posted.

  1. Five reasons to write lists
  2. Seven things that occupied my time over the weekend
  3. Five interesting things I learned about Calvin
  4. Three reasons to clean your fish tank
  5. Ten things I liked about the Townsville V8 Supercar Event
  6. Five reasons I’m not doing MTS
  7. Ten songs I would have voted for in JJJs Hottest 100 of all time

July 14, 2009

List of Songs I would have voted for…

I didn’t vote in JJJ’s hottest 100 of all time (here’s the list). I love the Js, but I haven’t listened to anything other than local ABC radio for months (except to listen to a little bit of the Hottest 100 of All Time).

It looks like the vote was crashed by a bunch of old time rockers with a penchant for Michael Jackson. There are hardly any songs from the last few years, which is pretty awesome.

If I had voted (and you get to vote for ten songs):

  1. I would have voted for one song per band
  2. I would have given greater weighting to songs from great albums or from bands producing consistently good music rather than one hit wonders.
  3. I would have rewarded bands who I appreciated in their halcyon days but don’t like so much any more (hence the inclusion of The Living End and Powderfinger – they really were my introduction to JJJ – even though they went on to be darlings of the mainstream).

These are the songs I think I would have voted for:

  1. Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees.
  2. Muse – Plug In Baby
  3. Paul Simon – Call Me Al
  4. Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm
  5. Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye
  6. Dandy Warhols – Get Off
  7. Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
  8. Powderfinger – Day You Come
  9. The Living End – Prisoner of Society
  10. Gomez – Shot Shot

Some of these songs were chosen arbitrarily as representatives of a band’s body of work – I really can’t decide what Radiohead, Muse, Smashing Pumpkins or Gomez song I like the best. Placebo and The Whitlams were unlucky not to make the list on the basis of criteria 3. 

July 14, 2009