After wandering down Victoria Street from work looking for some food for me dinner, I realised I was quite near St. James’s Park tube station. So feeling a little lazy and needing to do something new, I decided to go into the station and get the tube back to Victoria before heading back to the flat.
I’d walked past the station many times before when I used to walk up to Soho from Pimlico, but had never caught the train there before. Being on the Circle and District lines isn’t generally much help to me, and it was surprisingly a lot busier than the Victoria or Piccadilly lines that time of night.
My friend and work colleague Debashish came back from India yesterday, and brought with him some delicious Indian sweets. My desire for a “something new” was sadly stronger than my diet impulse, so I was tempted to try a piece of Kaju Katli, a cashew-based sweet.
It was definitely different, and the edible silver foil was slightly disconcerting too, but it’s always fun to try something new.
Needed some food and couldn’t be arsed to do much, so I popped into M&S in Cardinal Place to see what I could find. The most exciting - and new - food I could find was a cheese, chutney and pear sandwich.
As you have probably figured out I’m a big banana fan, but never had pera on a sandwich before. It was really nice, and complimented the cheese much better than I thought.
I may now have exhausted the “fruit in a sandwich” novelties :-)
Both Hilary and myself were a little bunged up, and she has some of those “Robbie Fowler style” strips that you can put on your nose to help you breathe more easily. I’d never tried them before so I thought I’d give it a go.
I was surprised how well they worked, and definitely made it easier to breathe as the name suggests. However it was a bit irritating after a while, so after about 30 minutes I gave up and went back to normal.
It was a slow day.
More banana based food, but a little more sophisticated than the day before.
I was looking for something Halloween themed to cook, but happened upon a recipe on the BBC site for Tempura Bananas.
I’m not entirely sure about the measurements they gave as the batter was very thin, and in the pan they didn’t look great, but they tasted delicious with some whipped double cream and melted Green and Blacks butterscotch chocolate.
A new thing born out of mild desperation.
Hilary was out at work and I had to wait in for a parcel to be picked up so I couldn’t nip out and get some food in, so I had to make do with whatever was in the house.
I made myself a sandwich but didn’t have any margarine in, so thought I’d try veggie ham, banana and - just for excitement - some Branston pickle.
It was actually better than it sounds, and the ingredients went quite well together.
Google finally allowed Google Apps users access to Google Plus, so even though I’m very late to the game I’m now a member of the new and slightly underwhelming social network.
I didn’t see many of my immediate contacts on there, but I guess I felt this way when I first joined Twitter back in the day - and look how well that turned out. However things have moved on a long way since then, and I’m not really seeing what this service is adding for me (as opposed to Google getting more data) compared to other similar services.
There’s a good chance I’ll be proven wrong, but I just don’t see how I’ll be moving off Facebook and Twitter any time soon.
This one’s thanks to my friend Saqib, who showed us something we didn’t know before on Wednesday.
I was wondering why I couldn’t snap a window to the right hand side of my left hand monitor (if that makes sense). I’d only used the mouse before to do so (which doesn’t work in a multi-monitor setup), and although I knew about the Windows Key-Up/Left/Right combination but assumed that would work the same as the mouse. But no - using the mouse cycles through the different monitors just how you’d want.
Whenever I learn a keyboard shortcut I always wish I knew more (and could type better!)
A new pub for the first time in a while - the Duke of York near our office and Victoria Station.
It’s a real old skool place, and not in a good way. It stinks of beer when you walk in, and the decor is like a pub from the 1980’s when I was a lad, with crappy leather seats and flock wallpaper. It was full of people going to see Billy Elliot in the theatre next door plus the usual commuter crowd when we went in after work.
Still missing working in Soho a lot :-(
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Now I’m getting towards the end of the year, I’ve been thinking how I’m going to challenge myself next year (I’m definitely not doing this again!)
Yesterday I happened upon a new website - http://www.dollarapp.com - whch had the great idea of doing a new mobile phone app every month, and charging $1 for it.
Now I’ve been looking for something that is both a challenge and might earn some money, so my plan right now for 2012 is to adapt this and do something very similar for Windows Phone apps. I have lots of ideas that may or may not be any good for phone apps, but as I think I’ve proven once I set myself a goal - however tedious - I’m pretty good at sticking at it :-)
Obviously I may change my mind when I have a “better” idea.
