New site

Almost a year ago I decided that I needed a new website, as the old one was full of dated and mostly abandoned content. It wasn’t exactly web 2.0 either, being full of hideous custom code including a custom photo album. No idea what I was thinking when I decided writing that would be a good idea…

Finally I got around to deleting most of the rubbish and moved what remained into a much simpler, cleaner site with a few AJAXey bits scattered throughout. It’s mostly static XHTML, with a little PHP to pull it all together.

Some content is now in the cloud, including my microblog and my photos (most of which weren’t previously online at all). When they fix a major RSS feed bug, my listened tracks from libre.fm will appear on the front page alongside the other content.

Please let me know if there’s any breakage…

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In memory of Keith Floyd

This post is partly inspired by The Food Pornographer, but mostly in memory of the original-and-best TV chef Keith Floyd, who died this week.

Floyd was by far the most passionate and inspirational TV chef to ever grace our screens. Over the years his shows were instrumental in fomenting my love of food, as well as being highly educational and inspirational, uniquely covering everything from peasant food to elaborate feasts. The combination of food and travel is one of my favourite things, due in no small part to his shows. I must get to his restaurant in Thailand sometime soon, presuming it stays around.

In an attempt to pay tribute to Floyd, I thought I’d try to cook something vaguely cheffy for the first time ever, instead of the quick/easy/lazy dishes I usually make. So I cooked a well-seasoned fillet steak in olive oil and butter, served with a stack of sweet potato chips and portabello mushrooms (cooked in the steak pan while the meat was resting). It’s not perfect (the plate seems unbalanced, maybe needs some other kind of veg), but it was really, really tasty. Naturally I consumed a fair amount of wine during the preparation – doing otherwise would just be disrespectful

So long Floyd. As Marco Pierre White said, “a little piece of Britain…died which will never be replaced”.

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Sometimes laziness…

…pays off.

For example, having been too lazy to make a serious attempt to remove the thorny mass that’s been threatening to take over my garden, it has now borne fruit – some nice ripe blackberries, to be precise.

Likewise the rapidly-expanding plant/weed that’s taking over my garden path is frequently full of bees, which are somewhat endangered at the moment, so I’d better not remove it…

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Changes…

Some may have noticed that I’ve recently outright deleted half the content of my site. Most of it was pretty old and generally not very interesting. I’m working on a new site which will have less random/rubbish/irrelevant content, but will incorporate lots of nice web 2.0-ey features. If I manage to find some way to produce nice graphics despite not having any graphical-design ability, it may even look nice

I’ve also taken a few tentative steps into microblogging with Identi.ca (mirrored on Twitter if you’re that way inclined).

It’ll all be coming Real Soon Now™.

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New Year’s Resolution #367

Must stop buying things I read about in Wired…

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