SJ Cuthbertson

If you’re a 20-something bloke purchasing a 16p box of painkillers in Boots, and the lady at the checkout tries to explain (in detail) how to safely take said painkillers, should you:
a) Be offended – she looked at you and assumed you weren’t able to read the words on the packet.
b) Be pleased – you clearly look so healthy that you’d never have needed painkillers before.
c) Be plain puzzled.

Do tell. If it happens to me a second time I’d like to know how to react…

This is quite cool: http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/.

Basically it parses the HTML structure of the page and turns it into a set of colour-coded nodes in 2D space. Try looking at this site’s graph (should be complete in <1min), or if you’ve got a lot of spare time, the Beeb homepage. Facebook’s AJAXy interface makes its graph surprisingly simple.

1. Just because I’m taking “a holiday” doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make a lengthy to-do list.
2. Family visits are much more pleasant in small doses.
3. It’s not just my memory, living in Devon really is quite dull compared to city life. That’s the geographic location rather than the people therein, just to be clear.
4. Hills do make a difference even if the walk is still only 30 minutes. Or: Just because you’re not out of breath doesn’t mean your muscles won’t complain the next day.
5. My Devon friends, quite rightly, (would) regard my Cambridge friends as quite crazy.
6. My Cambridge friends, quite rightly, (would) regard my Devon friends as quite crazy.
7. This appears to place me squarely in the category of “absolutely crazy, absolutely”.
8. I am on occasion both more socially anxious than I appear, and more socially anxious than I think I am.

I’ve been blogging far less than I’d like in the last few months. Suffice to say that there really isn’t much spare time around my job for such things: (personal) email, feed-reading and facebook have all been relegated to fairly infrequent tasks. But I think I imagine far more mental effort in writing here than is actually required. Now I’m typing again, it all comes so easily. I’ve got a bunch of rough drafts of more interesting posts that I might, if I’m lucky, get around to expanding before I go back to work. Thanks are due to the vulpine scribe that (accidentally) reminded me why I should keep this going.

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope 2009 treats you well. Oh, and looky, new site theme! Additional static content may follow.

For 2 people.

Ingredients:
4-6 good-quality sausages (I used Tesco ‘Finest’ Pork and Sweet Chilli bangers, which inspired the sauce)
200g (or a little more, depending on hunger) of tagliatelle.
2 medium onions, chopped in half-rings (ideally 1 red, 1 white)
Some mushrooms, chopped as appropriate (to taste)
Cider
~100ml single cream
1/2 red chilli, finely diced, or equivalent of fresh chilli-from-a-jar. Leave seeds out unless you really like hot food.
(optional) some sweet chilli sauce

Instructions:

1. Heat a shallow frying pan to medium, add oil and slow-cook the sausages, turning as necessary. Slower is always better with sausages!
2. In a deeper frying pan, heat some oil until fairly hot, and bung in the onions and mushrooms. After a minute or two turn the heat down and leave them on a low heat for 5 minutes, or until soft and browned.
3. Stir in the red chilli and/or sweet-chilli sauce.
4. Add a long splash of cider, enough to half-cover the onions and mushrooms. Adjust the heat as necessary and simmer the pan’s contents until the cider has reduced quite a lot. At this point, if you like, you can add another splash of cider and re-reduce.
5. While the cider is reducing, boil water and cook your tagliatelle as per pack instructions. When done, drain and return to saucepan, tossing with a little olive oil.
6. By now, your sausages should be done. Remove them from the pan and cut them up into chunks, roughly.
7. Add the sausages and some single cream to the deep pan and stir to coat everything.
8. Lastly, add the tagliatelle and toss thoroughly until coated with sauce. You got the right amount of cream if the tagliatelle is well coated but there’s no excess sauce in the bottom of the pan. Add a bit more cream and/or cider (to taste) if it’s looking a little dry.
9. Serve on warmed plates, enjoy!

If anyone cooks this and comes up with any modifications, please mention in the comments. I threw this together on the hoof without formulating a plan at any point – as such, although I was very pleased with the results, there are probably things that could be done better!

This summer/autumn I went from being a student to a pretty-much real-world worker, in something that approximates to an office.  My job is actually a lot more diverse than most office work, insofar as I have to spend a large portion of my time doing things in other parts of the theatre (bar, cellar, and front-of-house areas, primarily).  However, I thought it would be interesting to compare the productivity challenges and solutions that I faced as a student, to those I’m experiencing now.  While I had three years of student life (more than one of which after my discovery of GTD) to hone my work patterns in, I’ve only been in this environment for less than two months, so naturally I’m comparing a finished item to a work in progress.  I’m also going to be assuming that most aspects of my work aren’t too dissimilar to typical office work, which may not be true, but is a helpful simplification.  Caveats aside, here I go… Read the rest of this entry »