JANUARY 31
AND so back to Glendale today to Porto's, a Cuban bakery just up the road from my office. We'd been asked by a friend to get a couple of fruit tarts for a Superbowl party we're going to tomorrow. Porto's has been around for about 30 years and everything this place makes - cakes, pies, sandwiches, pasties, plantain chips - is fantastic. My own personal favourites include the Italian sub sandwich, the Papa Preparada, the plantain chips and the Media Noche. And the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies - mustn't forget those. The place is so well known and popular it's even been mentioned in an episode of Six Feet Under.
It's so popular that the current economic shitstorm seems to have completely passed it by for, as usual, it was packed with people getting lunch, picking up cakes or buying snacks:
With the fruit tarts boxed up and collected (along with some potato balls for the trip home) we hit Target, where I spotted this bit of marketing wizardry:
I'm trying to work out exactly who the target audience is for this... thing. I mean, how many people have faces carved from pure smug and hair so stupid it probably has its own reality show? To be honest I always thought the whole point of Axe products was to make girls like you, not to turn you into an enthusiastic pole-smoker with the most hittable face in the universe. Shortly after this abomination, George Lucas took another chunky dump on my childhood:
DARTH VADER ON A BOX OF VALENTINE'S CHOCOLATES? ARE YOU TAKING THE PISS, LUCAS?
JANUARY 30
TODAY was our monthly office birthday celebration get-together thingy which I usually skive. Unfortunately I couldn't get out of this one as I'm the only person in the office whose birthday is in January. So the entire staff had the honour of singing "Happy Birthday" to me while I stood in mortified silence, grinning like an idiot as my British reserve did its best to hold up under the relentless onslaught of American good cheer. The high point had to be the cake, a vast block of creamy white icing decorated with a bright rainbow (that's my piece above). If this cake was human it would live in West Hollywood, work as a flight attendant and spend a lot of money on lube.
To be fair the cake was pretty good, which came in useful around 9pm when I was desperately trying to do the bloody Burbank city council candidate pages and needed something to perk me up. Its remains plus a can of Coke made for this nutritious meal sugar-laden snack and ensured that, four hours later, I'm still hyperactive and incoherent.
JANUARY 30: VICTORY AT LAST
FOR the first time in Planet Mut's near five-year existence, Firefox has overtaken Internet Explorer as the browser most used to visit this site. And it's not just overtaken it, it's wiped the floor with it as more than 50% of visitors use some version of FF while only 39% use IE. Many of you might be thinking, "So what?" but it's great to see Microshite's rubbish software getting a good kicking from the open-source society. And it's also good to see that the people who visit me know enough to stay well away from Internet Explorer.
JANUARY 29
AS I SIT here having American Idol - or, as I like to think of it, America's Retardiest Retards - inflicted on me (thanks, Ev) and having the fires of my hatred for humanity stoked to new highs by the cavalcade of attention whores, gaylords, morons, shitheads, wankers, arses, mongs, nancies, preening twats and other self-obsessed scum march across my TV, I think to myself, "What this planet really needs is a comet across the face". Wait, no I don't - I think, "Shit, I linked to the wrong video last night." So here is the video of the escaping New Zealanders who are possibly the only people on the planet more stupid than your average American Idol contestant.
JANUARY 28: BLUNTY, YOU FORGOT MY BIRTHDAY AGAIN
YES, today I turned 37. As Flynn once told me, "Don't think of it as another year older - think of it was being another year closer to 40". Great. In other news, as I ambled down to Borders in Glendale tonight to spend the giftcard Ev's mum gave me I spotted flashing lights in the distance. Looks like the Jewel City's expert drivers have done it again...
I think this is the fifth or sixth major smash in the city since the start of the year. Glendale drivers are terrible, and that's terrible spelt "S-H-I-T-E". Honestly, they are bloody awful. So awful, in fact, that Glendale came 192nd out of 193 in a list of America's safest cities to drive in. You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the PDF to find it.
JANUARY 27
ANOTHER Christmas, another camera to add to my collection of gadgets - this time in the form of a Target giftcard. I meant to do an update about this just after Christmas but Ev put the driver CD somewhere so safe I couldn't find it until last night so I couldn't get the photos off it.
It's got a 1.2MP sensor, 8Mb of built-in storage, and holds about 50 photos in total. The whole "card" aspect is rather spoiled by the camera taking two AAA batteries, meaning it may be card-sized from the front but its actual dimensions are more like those of a packet of fags. Unfortunately the card comes in a huge plastic package with a USB cable and driver CD meaning it's impossible to stick one in your back pocket and walk out with it like you can with the normal giftcards. And the minimum you can put on the card to "buy" one is $50, which seems a bit steep as you can buy a "proper" 1.3MP camera for about $70. But to put it in perspective, my first digital camera, bought in 2000, was a 1.3MP Olympus that took four AAs and set me back the best part of $400.
Anyway, it's not exactly going to challenge my XT for role of "Most Valuable Camera" but as another way of snapping pics of the cats/cars/weirdoes/me giving V-signs to Hummers (more on that at a later date) it's pretty good. Here are some photos taken with it:
Once connected to the PC, Windows will happily use it as a webcam - here's a grab of the Acer. Not great, but passable. And if you turn it on its side you get a modern take on Edvard Munch's The Scream:
Credit where it's due, Target does come up with some great giftcard-based gadgets; a couple of years ago they put out a card that doubled as a 512Mb mp3 player which I completely failed to get hold of. I did, however, manage to snaggle a couple of these:
It's a 64Mb flash drive in the shape of a Speed Racer-themed giftcard. I realise 64Mb is hardly something to shout about but hey, it's free.
JANUARY 25: THE AFTERNOON UPDATE
DOING the drop caps on the site brought back memories of a near-disaster I almost caused when working at Celtic Newspapers back in the late 90s. Like all newspapers the nine titles I helped edit and design had a page for readers' letters and comments and the papers' weekly editorials. The editorial ran down the two left-hand columns of the page and dealt with whatever the hot topic of the week happened to be. Oh, and editorials always started with a drop-cap. This is a very important point.
One day one of the papers (I forget which one) did something different. There were so many big issues going on in the paper's area that the editorial was split into four separate smaller pieces, each one dealing with a different topic. Just using a drop cap on the first piece didn't work as it looked like one long editorial split into four parts. So the genius that is me put a drop cap on each part, printed the page and went for a ciggie.
I returned to my desk to find the proof lying on my keyboard with the editor's "OK" scribbled across it, meaning it was ready to be sent to the press. I opened it in QuarkXpress and was about to release it when the drop caps suddenly leapt out of the page at me.
Read from top to bottom, those four three-line drop caps, each one standing out proudly in Franklin Gothic Bold, clearly spelt "T-W-A-T".
Oops. Calling over the editor, I pointed out this small problem and he responded in a professional and dignified manner by pissing himself laughing. After some quick editing we changed the editorials around so the drop caps read something like "T-T-A-W". Which is a shame as it would have been interesting to see exactly how many people noticed the original.
JANUARY 25 (VERY, VERY EARLY)
AS ALL five of you might have noticed, the redesign continues to be buggered about with. Earlier this afternoon I changed the link colour to match the upper star in the masthead and now I've added drop caps, something I've wanted to do for ages as drop caps always add a touch of class. And let's face it, this site could do with all the class it can get.
It was straightforward to create them - I had to define a .drop style on Planet Mut's CSS file and then add a span class to the start of each entry. The .drop style defines the size, font, colour and height of the caps; all it takes is one change to the style and all drop caps change automatically. Once I'd decided what I wanted them to look like I just added the span class and voilà - Robert's your mother's brother.
Of course now I have to decide whether to just start doing drop caps from now on or go about adding them to all the existing pages. I'm not sure how many pages there are on Planet Mut. I mean I know there's more than three and less than a squillion but at the mo I can't be arsed to go through 'em all.
JANUARY 24: FUN WITH FOOD
TONIGHT we had dinner with Brenda and Marty at The Old Spaghetti factory in Newport Beach, a restaurant which (duh) serves spaghetti-based dishes. I ordered the Italian sausage dish with meat sauce and a side of meatballs. Never one to pass up the chance of acting like a 12-year-old I leapt into action...
And to think I'm 37 next week. You'd never guess, would you?
JANUARY 24
MY EX-COLLEAGUE and good friend Jon sent me a link to a piece about how some British towns have embarrassing, odd or downright weird names. Most of these names are historic - Butt Hole Road in Yorkshire, for example, was once a source of water (butt being a container for water) - and weren't actually rude when the place was named. The article doesn't mention my own personal favourite, a street in London called Gropecocke Lane for decades because of all the prostitutes who gathered there. (Don't bother looking for it now - the bloody Victorians renamed it). On the other hand, as maidenhead's meant pretty much the same thing for centuries why people would name their town "virginity" is perplexing.
(On an aside, it's interesting how the article talks about these embarrassing names in England and then goes on to mention East Breast... which is in Scotland. And no shout-out to Penisawaun in Wales?)
The article is a good read and goes some way to explaining something that mystifies foreigners: why it is that us Brits find double entendres and toilet humour so bloody funny. Ev cannot understand why I love British TV shows like Men Behaving Badly and Bottom; as she says, it's just a couple of blokes telling fart jokes and burping. She doesn't seem to understand that telling fart jokes and burping are the bedrock of our culture, which is why British telly has swearing and boobs and shagging and America has Everybody Loves Raymond.
On a similar note, me and Jon recently had an email argument debate about the two versions of The Italian Job, with us split firmly along national lines. I backed the original 1969 British classic (proper Minis, "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!", This Is The Self-Preservation Society, Benny Hill perfectly cast as a dirty old man, "Hang on a minute, lads, I've got an idea..." etc) and Jon defended the 2003 American remake (er... something about Napster, Jason "hasn't been in a decent film since Snatch" Statham, not even filmed in Italy, Mark "couldn't act with a gun to his head" Wahlberg, etc).
Jon put my love of the original down to the British sense of humour, what he called "a faulty (or is that Fawlty), not to say twisted, sense of such things...." Oscar Wilde once said that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language; he should have added that we're also divided by an by an utter incomprehension as to why Americans find Saturday Night Live funny, or why us Brits love our toilet humour.
JANUARY 23: FIRST GLOAT OF THE YEAR
TWO hundred and forty-three miles on half a tank? That'll do nicely.
JANUARY 22: THE GRATUITOUS SIĀN UPDATE
SHE really is the best niece in the universe.
JANUARY 21
SO IT'S goodnight from Circuit City. All its remaining stores - including the one in Seal beach which only opened about a year ago - are closing. This means Best Buy, a store famous for employing know-nothing teenagers and not honouring its own warranties, is the only major electronics retailer in the area. Wonderful. Not that Circuit City was perfect as I've had a couple of trips there ruined by over-helpful staff who don't seem to realise that the words "No thanks, I'm just looking" actually mean "Will you please piss off and leave me alone". Looks like it'll be Wal-Mart and Amazon for my gadget needs from now on.
JANUARY 20 (LATER)
I MISS all the bloody fun. Ev called me earlier tonight to tell me a heavily-armed SWAT team was kicking down the door of one of the apartments in our building. After breaking in the door they threw in a flash-bang grenade before storming the place. The woman who lives there was taken away by the cops with most of the building's tenants watching. They also towed her SUV. I'm so happy I was sitting in the office waiting for the late story.
ONE or two (or perhaps even all five of you) may have noticed a slight change around here. Ev likes it so much that she's already set the masthead as her work PC's background image. I've been planning a redesign of Planet Mut for ages as, although the lined paper look suited the site, I was getting bored of it. Thanks to using CSS it was basically just a case of changing the background colour and doing some new graphics.
JANUARY 20
DEAR America: Next time, please remember that C-grade students should only be put in charge of the night shift at Wendy's.
JANUARY 18
EV SPOTTED this poor little sod jammed in our screen door so I had to get a photo of it with the macro lens.
Speaking of Ev, she's currently watching a DVD called P.S. I Love You. I'd never heard of it and, just 16 minutes in, I wish I still hadn't. And by Christ, Hilary Swank is UGLY.
JANUARY 17
PROOF - if proof were needed - that marketing people inhabit a world of their own comes in the form of Rim It!
Imagine whipping this out at a party and watching your entire group of friends leg it out the door... except for that guy from the office who's seen Mamma Mia! 20 times and has pictures of Barbara Streisand all over his cubicle.
Three rimming sugars and a rimming dish? Did no one involved in the making of this product see the innuendo inherent in these words? And then I discovered this while looking for shower gel:
"De-poof" shampoo? WTF? I guess this must be the shampoo that straightens you out in more ways than one.
JANUARY 16
ANOTHER moon shot from the apartment, taken at f/18, 1/10s, ISO 100. It's OK but I couldn't get it any sharper - my Sigma 70-300mm lens gets a bit soft around the 280mm end. I'll just have to keep practicing.
JUNE... ER, JANUARY 12
DID I wake up in the summer? Why is it in the high 80s? And the heatwave's set to continue all the way through to the weekend. It was 72 when I left work at gone 10 tonight. I'd kill for a month or two of cloudy skies and rain.
JANUARY 11
BACK in September 2000 I bought my first digital camera, a 1.3 megapixel Olympus C-830L, and started visiting places to take photos. One of the trips I remember best is going to Devil's Bridge in Ceredigion, west Wales, in November 2002. Once I'd stocked up on fags, sarnies, Coke, water and petrol at Asda in Dowlais I checked my roadmap and headed off. Being me, I couldn't just drive straight there, oh no - I had to stop several times to take piccies of the scenery.
One of the best things about Wales is that it's beautiful no matter what the weather. The sky is grey, the clouds are down to the mountaintops, the trees are bare and there's no one else around. In fact I think I saw two other cars on my trip.
This mountain stream was across the road from where I'd parked. I'm not sure why there's a gate across the stream.
The road I was travelling on to get to Devil's Bridge.
The red phone box and closed gift shop at the top of the bridge. There's no attendant; to access the path to the river you put a pound coin in the turnstile and go through. As luck would have it I didn't actually have any pound coins on me and the local hotel was also closed. But after hunting through my car I found one in the ashtray so I could get in.
Here's the view over the side of the bridge down to the Mynach River. At this point it drops about 300 feet and joins the River Rheidol.
The steps heading down the gorge which I nearly fell down after slipping on the wet leaves.
As the 2002 me heads down to the rain-swollen river the 2008 me is wondering why the 2002 me took so many vertical photos.
The Mynach comes down the gorge...
...pours through the narrow channel...
and shoots through the gap under the bridge.
Here's the bridge itself. It's actually three bridges; the lower one built sometime in the 1100s, the middle one in 1753 and the top one in 1901. Legend has it that people thought the gorge was unbridgeable so the Devil offered to build the crossing in exchange for the soul of the first living thing to cross. The villagers agreed and the bridge was built but an old woman got the better of the Devil by throwing bread onto the bridge for her dog to chase and the Devil had to take its soul.
Across the road from the bridge is a path to the Mynach Falls, which is where I headed next.
Smooth, uneven cobbles and wet leaves don't make for the best footing, especially when you're wearing Converse All-Stars and you're too busy looking for photo opportunities to watch where you're going. These reasons are undoubtedly why I went over on my arse just after taking this photo.
Stone me, I've actually taken a horizontal photo. Look at that view - no concrete in sight.
The first view of the falls. It is possible to walk down to the bottom of the gorge, which is what I'm about to do...
... and to do so I have to make my way down stone steps called Jacob's Ladder. Which I did. Slowly. Very slowly.
I'm getting closer to the falls now. The noise made by the churning water was pretty loud and showed how powerful the river is.
Once you reach the bottom this bridge allows you to cross the Mynach. At this point it dawned on me that I was going to have to climb back up the other side, which is just as steep as the steps I'd just come down. Arse.
A photo of the river from the iron bridge. It really was torrential here - if you fell in you'd be buggered.
A pic taken from the same place but facing in the opposite direction as the river winds its way into the wilds of Ceredigion.
Looking up the side of the gorge. I wonder if 2002 me ever thought, "I'm taking a lot of vertical photos. Maybe I should take some horizontal ones".
Obviously not. At this point I'm making my way up the steps on the other side of the gorge which are carved next to the waterfall. It's very noisy and pretty spectacular. There's not too far to go now and I'll be back at the top where I can sooth my rasping lungs with a Marlboro.
This is the top of the Mynach Falls, or at least from what I remember it's the top. I have no more shots after this one so I'm assuming a) either every pic from now on was crap so I deleted them, b) the batteries on the camera ran out, or c) I was too busy trying not to die after walking up all those steps I couldn't be arsed to take any more. Either way it was a great day out and a good chance for me to justify the £200 I'd forked out on the camera.
JANUARY 10: IT'S SPOTTED DICK TIME
IN FACT it's time for two British delicacies - spotted dick and plum pudding, both of which we've had for ages. We had a few friends over tonight and used the occasion as an excuse to get the puds out of the cupboard and into the microwave. The full line up of classic UK stodge included spotted dick, plum pudding, Ambrosia custard and hard sauce. What is hard sauce?
Becky gets to grips with her first spotted dick.
Safely ensconced in the ritual bowl ($3.99 in the better Goodwill stores) the spotted dick is placed in the microwave and nuked for five minutes, which turned out to be about four minutes more than it actually needed.
The hard sauce was nuked until it blew its top.
The plum pudding (right) is placed on the traditional serving plate next to the spotted dick, which has already been sliced with the ceremonial hacksaw into the requisite eight pieces.
The custard and hard sauce are ready for action.
Shelley gives the spotted dick and custard a tentative try before shovelling the whole plate down her face. Both puddings went down a storm (which is probably the wrong expression to use when talking about spotted dick) and I think I've furthered the re-colonisation of America another step.
I COULDN'T quite understand what Ev and Becky found so funny about this woman's whale-tail but apparently she's wearing it inside out and very possibly on sideways. Here's a close-up:
AND I don't know if anyone's interested, but there's a free Christmas tree available for pickup outside our building.
JANUARY 9
EV TURNED 38 today... er, I mean 21. I suppose I shouldn't laugh as in a couple of weeks I'll be 37. Anyway, on a happier note here's Siân wearing an outfit that screams "I AM A GIRL":
AND I passed this on the way to work yesterday:
It was part of a four-car crash on the 2 freeway. How anyone manages to crash on the 2 is beyond me as it's usually quiet.
JANUARY 7
AFTER sitting through it for 100 minutes last night, could someone please explain to me what I ever saw in Event Horizon?
JANUARY 6
F So here we go...
We kick off with this gore-fest which is described as shrimp creole. According to the recipe the parsley ring adds a simple touch of glamour to the dish, in much the same way as a neon license-plate frame adds a simple touch of glamour to a 1991 Honda Civic. And it took me a while to realise that the salt and pepper pots are not filled with gestating alien fetuses but just painted to look like they're filled with gestating alien fetuses.
Bill and Mary invite you over for dinner one night. Mary answers the door and lets you in. Drinks in hand you survey tonight's feast. You ask where Bill is. Mary gives a nervous little smile and glances at the table. And then you realise.
I'm trying to understand where the art director was coming from with this photo. "OK... I've got the cheese soufflé, the grater, the whisk, the cheese... what else? [snaps fingers] Of course! The broken eggshell! Genius!"
Tens of millions of people eat chicken curry every day but as this is an American book it's in the "Fancy Foods" chapter. Somewhere in India a housewife is reading a cookbook which has a section on such exotic delicacies as cheeseburgers and ranch dressing.
"Honey, do we have anything I can use to garnish these pale undercooked lumps of meat?"
"Sure! What about some of those yellow triangles of wet flab we've had in the fridge for a couple of weeks?"
"Perfect!"
This is described as "Corned Beef Bake with Lettuce Wedges and French Dressing". Note that the lettuce has been relegated to a slight glimpse in the upper-right corner as not to offend the sensibilities of red-blooded American men. Remember - ONLY COMMIES EAT GREENS!
This is "jazzy beef stew". Apparently it's vital to use the right kind of oil to achieve the perfect flavour. From the photo I'd say the "right kind of oil" has been drained from an Austin Metro that hasn't been serviced since 1982.
Jesus Christ we have to slice Frank up now? When will this horror end?
Mexico takes on Italy in this chili-pasta concoction which looks like it's been garnished with rabbit poo.
This is a jumbo cornburger. Ever wondered how the American healthcare system makes so much money? Now you know.
As someone (mentioning no names, Ev) threw out the pages after I scanned them I can't remember what this dish is. I mean, I know it's waffles, everyone can see it's waffles, but what the hell is in that sauce she's pouring over them? And why are they being served with burnt peaches?
This must be from the chapter on cooking with carburettors. "Use only Castrol GTX for the best results when deep-frying your neighbours. AND DON'T TOUCH THE VEG, COMMIE!"
JANUARY 4 - LATER
IN WHAT is possibly a new record for Charter Communications and whichever Chinese sweatshop makes their crappy equipment, our new HD DVR cable box packed up a scant SEVEN HOURS after being installed this afternoon. Someone is coming on Tuesday morning to replace it. I might ask him to hang around a couple of hours in case the new box gives up the ghost.
JANUARY 4
TODAY I finally plucked up the courage to have a go at cleaning the mirror and sensor of my Rebel XT with the kit Ev got me for Christmas. I've been a bit worried about giving it a go as one scratch on either component and I'll be back to using Ev's point-and-shoot Fuji.
Here's what you get in the box. At the top is the instruction manual (which is covering the battery pack) and below are, left, the sensor scope and cleaning fluid; centre, the sensor vac; and right, the cleaning wands.
My XT sans front cap and with its mirror locked up so I can access the sensor.
The first thing to do is see how dirty the sensor actually is. The sensor scope fits onto the lens mount and four bright white LEDs illuminate the inside of the camera body so you can see how much dust and other crap is in there.
Here's a view through the scope with the LEDs lit. I can't remember if this is the sensor or the mirror, but you get the idea. Now you know where the dust and other bits are, you can get it with the sensor vac.
Here's the vac attached to its battery pack. It can also be powered from a USB port and has a superbright LED so you can see what you're doing while arsing around in your $800 camera.
In goes the vac. It has a soft brush tip which is supposed to be mirror- and sensor-safe but I'm not going to risk it. The vac is designed to remove the majority of contaminants before you use the wands and cleaning fluid.
After vac'ing the camera's interior it's time for the cleaning swabs. After putting a drop or two of solution on the end you have to stroke it once to clean off the sensor, and then repeat for the mirror. Note the instructions on the right - possibly the only time in my life I've bothered with a manual.
This is a view of the mirror - the small rectangles are the focusing dots that appear in the viewfinder. I gave the mirror a once-over with the cleaning wand and then put the lens back on. There's still a small hair in the camera but as it's not showing up on photos I'm not too bothered about it. All in all the sensor kit is a great tool and pretty easy to use. At least I won't be so nervous about cleaning it next time.
JANUARY 3 (LATER)
SOME more coin photos:
A two pence coin. I cleaned this one up a bit with cider vinegar and scouring powder but didn't want it to be too shiny as that would make it a pain in the arse to light. The camera's done a pretty good job of capturing its warm colour.
Another Welsh pound coin, this one displaying a leek which is one of our national emblems along with the daffodil and the dragon.
A close-up of the coronet surrounding the base of the leek. I couldn't quite get the sharpness I managed last time so this image is softer than I hoped. And I've just noticed it's not quite straight. Bugger.
I cleaned one fifty-pence coin but it became too shiny to photograph decently so I used this dirtier one.
Here's a detail shot of Britannia. She's appeared on British coins since Roman times.
JANUARY 3
I MAY be going out on a limb here...
...but I'd say the driver of this superbly-parked car...
is a) female, b) old, or c) both.
HERE we are only 10 days from Christmas and two days after the New Year and Target's already filled its shelves with Valentine's Day tat. At this rate the Fourth of July stuff should be on sale in March.
JANUARY 2
WHILE having a bit of a cleanup after Christmas I came across a Welsh pound coin and decided to give it the macro treatment.
I also found the CD that came with my Rebel XT and installed the remote control software on my Acer. Now I can set almost every aspect of the camera's settings - aperture, mode, shutter speed and so on - from the notebook without having to touch the camera itself and risk moving it once I've got the subject positioned and lit in the frame.
A closer look at the dragon. I know I'm biased but we really are top of the heap for national emblems. Anyway, the coin is lit by two mini Maglight penlights resting on the kitchen counter on opposite sides of the coin and pointing in its general direction.
It's amazing how much detail the macro lens (the Canon 50mm f/2.5) picks up. I'm going to take more shots over the weekend and continue to play around with the lighting.
