Pick of the week XV

This week’s pick of the week is Doing Nothing All Weekend. That is all.

Pick of the week XIV

I had to pick this little piece of internet madness this week, simply because it gave me the biggest giggle I have had for a while. It’s far too long to embed in the post, so I’ll just ask you to click here: Please return my spider.

Funniest thing is, I have honestly had email conversations like that with people who genuinely weren’t doing it on purpose.

Enjoy.

Pick of the week XII

Today’s pick of the week is very slightly hypocritical, because I have never actually bought any of the lovely things I am going to recommend. Not for lack of wanting to, or even for lack of cash, but simply because lovely as they are, they just wouldn’t suit me. I just don’t have the kind of figure that looks good in a basic-shaped t-shirt, no matter how cool the design. I really wish I did, because some of these tees just rock. So I get Husband to wear the cool tees, he’s my perfect fashion accessory.

There are many many great t-shirt sites on the web, possibly the best known is lafraise.com, where you can vote for the designs you like, and buy the ones that make it through the selection.

Another unmissable place for t-shirts and much much much more, if you are a geek, is ThinkGeek.com, possibly one of the worst sites on the whole wide web for causing sever decreases in productivity. Not Safe For Work in the very “may get you fired because you’ve spent the last 6 hours looking at marshmallow guns” kind of way. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And last but not least, a little one I stumbled across the other day, Snorgtees, has a hilarious range of designs…

Pick of the week XI

I don’t think this requires much further comment, it’s just the thing that made me laugh the most this past week.

Pick of the week X

I was first sent a link to this blog for a story on the state and situation of the original Winnie the Pooh toys. And then I started poking around at some of the other stories, and realised what a great blog it was, so I thought I’d share it here.

Scouting NY is a blog kept by a location scout working in New Yawk. Crap. I mean New York. Damn you Marty!

Not only are there some kick ass photos in there, but the places themselves are quite fascinating. I must say, I am now suffering from quite a severe case of job envy! It just looks like such a fascinating thing to do!

I’m warning you, if you click on the link below, you should abandon any hope you may have had of getting anything done in the next few hours.

www.scoutingny.com

Pick of the week IX

Well, as today is a particularly lazy post-barbeque Sunday, I thought I’d pick you all a particularly indulgent and yummy pick of the week. So here are my current 2 favourite treats. And yet again, Twitter is to blame.

First, Stephanie mentioned Chocolate and Guinness* cake. Ok, so she had me at “chocolate”, but the addition of Guinness, now my local tipple of choice, made me that bit more curious. So I googled it, and found Nigella’s recipe for this terrible evil dessert. And I tried it. And loved it. And now I’m hooked. So try it yourself, it’s a very easy one to do, just make sure you have a big enough saucepan and baking tin because there is a lot of cake mix. Also, my own little tip: only put in 250g of sugar, 400 is just ridiculous. I haven’t tried the icing yet, it is just lovely on its own.

And then, as I mentioned before, I ended up with a rather large quantity of raspberries. Rather than just succumb to the obvious cliché of jam making, I asked the Twitter hivemind for suggestions, and Geoff came up with this mind-blowingly yummy recipe for Iced Scandinavian Berries with white chocolate sauce (second recipe on the page). At first I thought it looked insanely sweet and reckoned it would turn out to be quite sickening, but actually, the cream and the unsweetened berries mean that all the sweetening is being done by the white chocolate, so it levels out and becomes quite delicious!

Enjoy!

*Of course, being baked, there is no alcohol at all left in the cake by the time it’s ready to eat.

Pick of the week VIII

Well, following on from last week’s pick, here are a few great Twitter accounts to follow. And if you’re not on Twitter yet, get on it now.

Veryshortstory does exactly what it says on the tin. Every tweet is a complete story in only 140 characters or less. Unfortunately they are usually too long to re-tweet, but they are very very good. There is also a website where you can read them all, and you can become a fan on facebook too if you’re on that…

Shitmydadsays, again, another one that delivers exactly what it promises. A guy named Justin tweeting the stuff his aged parent comes out with, and some of it is just priceless!

Featsoftweet is a new project by Paul the Twitchhiker (and if you weren’t following that particular adventure, check out his website!) and it looks quite promising. Yet another way of harnessing the power of the Twitterverse!

Pick of the week VII

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time there was a princess.

Well, obviously, not a real princess, but no-one ever starts a story with “once upon a time there was a thirty-something web designer”.

Anyhoo, this particular princess must have had a whole bag of Bird’s Eye frozen peas under mattress because she just couldn’t sleep. While she was tossing and turning, her poor tired brain got hit by a freak ray of inspiration, and she ended up muling over what seemed to be quite a good idea. So she got up and wrote it down and went back to bed.

The rule for insomnia-induced good ideas is that if they still seem like good ideas the next day, they are worthy of further research. This one did, so much so that for once it has actually made it to the realisation stage. It should be launching soon, so this is a slightly preemptive Pick of the week. Let’s just say this is your exclusive preview to thank all 3 of you for reading my blog…

So, the big idea is called Tweet Side Story. It’s like that game you play where someone starts a story and then you go round the campfire, and everyone adds a sentence or two to the story until it spirals out of control and starts involving pot plants and aliens. It’s exactly like that, but on Twitter. Go take a look at the website, and follow @tweetsidestory on Twitter, so you’ll be the first to know when it starts up!

Thanks must be given to my partner in crime, Damo, whose main job in this venture is to prod me and ask me if it’s ready yet, and when we’re going to be rich. Soon, Damo, soon…

Pick of the week V

You know how to peel a banana, right?

Wrong!

The glorious thing about the Internet is that, while you’re sifting through the infinite quantities of crud, every now and then you find a gem. It’s a bit like beachcombing, sometimes you find a pretty shell, sometimes the shell is pretty enough for you to pick it up and look closer. If it’s really pretty, you might show it to your friends, or even put it in your pocket and take it home and pop it on the window sill. And then, sometimes, you find a washed up waterproof suitcase full of a couple of million in used notes belonging to some people who will really really want it back.

Well, obviously not literally, that only happens in films. But every now and then, you will encounter something on the interwebs that will change your life. Maybe in a small way, maybe it will radically shake your world.

Well this is one of those life-changing ones. Maybe I’d better just let you watch it for yourself.

Yes. You are not mistaken. This is amazing, groundbreaking, earth-shattering stuff. And now, you too know the secret. In fact a secret so well kept, one could easily think the united governments of the world had conspired to hush it up. Easily.

But now the secret is out, what destiny now awaits us enlightened ones? We must pass on the information to those who are still set in their paths of lowly stem-end-peelers. Also, it could be a good way to impress people at fancy parties, and therefore climb the social ladder as if it was one big banana plant*. Yeah baby, we’ll all be hobnobbing with the nobs any day now! And all that thanks to the secret of proper banana peeling.

All we have to do is find parties where they serve bananas.

*Bananas don’t grow on trees, you know, the banana tree is a giant grass, and bananas themselves are in fact technically berries. I should totally be on QI. Also, I know way too much about bananas, this is slightly worrying.

Pick of the week IV

Surprisingly enough, the Light House cinema in Dublin is not only not a lighthouse, or a tower of any shape or form, it’s underground. In fact, it’s doubly underground. Underground as in not very well known, kind of arty and different, and very very cool. And underground in that you have to go down a lot of steps.

The architecture inside is quite stunning, with the sloping ceilings created by the tiered seating in the screen rooms above, clad in black, standing out against the clutter-free plain white walls, and splashes of colourful designer seats here and there. It’s like walking into a real life episode of Grand Designs, you keep expecting Kevin McCloud to come strolling round the corner in an artfully distressed jacket. Or at the very least someone with a beret and plenty of existential angst.

The little café on the ground floor is just lovely, and the food and drink is all very posh, in a neat, designer way. They have scones. Scones in a cinema foyer! But they do still have popcorn. However not in anything so crass as a jumbo-sized tub. Oh no. This is like a cinema, but for grown ups.

And you know what? It’s incredibly refreshing to go and see a movie in a place where your feet don’t stick to the floor, there are no small kids jumping up and down during your 15-rated film, and no-one spends the entire time texting their mates, or in some extreme cases actually taking phone calls.