Paper Geek #2

I was reading some old MAKE magazines yesterday and stumbled across a bit of paper craft, more specifically an nice little origami trick to make and envelope. Now if only I had a pen pal to send one too.

Step 1,

These are nice and easy to make all you need is a piece of A4 paper, start with the paper in portrait and fold it horizontally in half, fig. 1

fig. 1

Step 2,

Fold the bottom right and top left corner into the middle, fig. 2

fig. 2

Step 3,

Fold in each of the remaining straight edges so that they line up with inside folds, fig. 3

fig. 3

Step 4,

Fold in the bottom left and top right corners diagonally to create a rectangle, fig. 4

fig. 4

Final step,

Now tuck the edges into the flaps, fig. 5, and there you have your very own handmade origami envelope. Now go forth and correspond.

fig. 5

 

Sega Master System Dock

A while ago I posted this, a iPhone Dock made using a classic NES controller. I thought damn Stephen you need to gets you one of those, so today I've had been trying to put together my very own classic controller docking station. The main deviation from the linked guide is simply the choice of what pad to use, I was always a SEGA kid and since my old Master System gave up the ghost I have kept it around not really wanting to throw it away, this gave me the perfect opportunity to stop it collecting dust and re-purpose part of it.

What you need is a few basic tools such as, a small screw driver, Knife and a small hacksaw. In addition you'll need a iPhone USB lead and a Control Pad.

fig, 1

First unscrew the small screws on the back of the control pad, usually four or five, and remove the contents. Keep the screws safely to one side we will be needing them later, they are small so you don't want to lose them.

fig, 2

Cut the wires connecting the flex to the two chip boards, keep these boards safe as they will need to go back into the unit in order for the buttons to still press in and out. Clean out the top half of the unit and cut a hole with a knife, once you have an opening big enough you can remove the hacksaw blade pass it through the hole in the controller, re attache the blade and cut the plastic to shape. Knives and saws are sharp, so please be careful with this step. Once the hole is wide enough you can thread the lead through (fig, 3).

fig, 3

Now in order for the pad to look ultra cool we want the flex to fit through the hole in the pad originally meant for the lead that plugs into the console. This is fiddly but realistically quite easy to achieve, there should be a screw peg on the inside of the case, the flex will be able to snake around this and run through the half circle at the back (fig, 4).

fig, 4

Once this is in place you can insert the buttons and chips, make sure everything fits nicely and screw the back of the pad back into place. Congratulations you now have one awesome iPhone dock.

Finished dock from the front,

and from the back.

And with an iPod plugged in and charging, had to use my phone for the pics.

Touch my Gameboy

So if you had a nice new tablet what would be the first thing you do?

Obviously it's to install a Gameboy colour emulator and play Pokemon yellow.

I used an app called John GBC Lite, available from Google Play.

Paper Geek

Boredom in the office and access to the internet leads to terrible things, terrible but creative. Today I came across this, a paper iPod dock, which i thought was pretty cool indeed. I rustled up a quick version, however paper doesn't really work quite as well as card should. Very collapsible.

Template for the paper dock, A PDF is available Here

 This got me looking for other alternative paper docks, the German website DATENSTRUDEL offers this take on a paper dock. I really like this version, though it requires a digital clock app to get the full on effect, no free PDF's for this either.

I found a few, different lo-tech variations on the docking theme, including this rather cool Lego creation and an ingenious new use for the iPhone box itself,

But the master and king of all DIY iPhone docks has to be without doubt this, a classic NES controller upcycled into a docking station, instructions can be found here, It really genuinely doesn't look to complex to create and it almost looks like it was made with this in mind. This is one project that I think I'm going to have a serious go at re-creating.

Also worth mentioning because in the future I really want to have a crack at it is this bad boy,

Yeah that's totally a Gameboy external hardrive, how to do this unbelivable act you ask? Go here.

Ego

you can only take being told to politely fuck off so many times....

Selective editing

Some times it can be rather difficult to edit words, especially when faced with awkward or contradictory restraints. For example, if i'm writing a short paragraph why would the two only rules be that I need two short sentences and three hundred words? Yeah 150 word sentences that's some real nice editing....

Also getting increasingly frustrated over not knowing where my print screen button is, my keyboard is in English layout but the keys are faced with the Spanish layout. Took two years to figure out how to do ~.

Lust

I want this perhaps a little too much....

Quarter exceeded

On Friday I became twenty five, doesn't sound to bad but lets think of it like this, I'm now a quarter of a century old. Yeah, it's super. 

Anyway, to celebrate I spent the day in Birmingham, and odd choice to some I know but having spent a few years universing at Wolverhampton it was a nice little slice of nostalgia. Birmingham, for all its bad press is actually a really nice city, sort of like a Manchester in the Midlands. You have the obvious tourist spots like the Bullring (its good, not quite as good shopping wise as say, the Arndale but I will say that Birmingham's Selfridges is far, far better than Manchester's. It's also home to my new favourite and most awesome shop in the entire cosmos, Pedlars.) and the Sea Life Centre (what more do you need other than sharks and otters).

The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is always worth a visit, and it's currently showcasing a glimpse of the fairly recent Safford Saxon hoard. Unfortionatly there really wasn't much Saxon treasure to see, but the craftmanship that would of gone into each of the individual pieces was incredible.

Another place I made sure to visit was the IKON gallery, set in a refurbished church up in Brindley place, it is a fantastic building and i was perhaps an awful lot more interested in the building its self rather than its exhibits. On I did like was this piece.

It captured the moment that a lamppost falls and collides with an awning, not pictured is the explosion of paving slabs surrounding the base of the post. iPhone cameras are only so wide.

Due to the rain we didn't stray to far from the centre, which meant missing out on the excellent custard factory and the vintage market on Digbeth Road. And then we left for home, the end.

This is a Turtle

Pix'n Love Rush

I am very enamoured with an iOS game at the minute. It's called pix'n rush and it is simply the most addictive thing since gamefreak invited you to catch them all.
The game offers you four different modes of play, several awesome plinky plonk tunes and graphics and a whole lot of pixels. Though it must be said I only really play the 'rainbow rush', a neat little timed game. You have one minute to collect as many pick ups as possible running back and two across a stage, suns during day and moons during night, the nice little mechanic being that when you hit a stage wall the day switches to night. You gain extra time and points by picking up the symbols, every ten or so netting you five more seconds. It is absolute zen bliss. Frankly there's no other reason to own an iPhone over than to play this game.

It's made by pastagames and is in the app store now. And it's free.

Victoria Park

The thing about Widnes is that for all the miserable and hideous excuses for humanity there is certain gems to be had and the big one for me has to be in the buildings. Widnes has scores (well ok five or six) of listed buildings from 900 year old churches to classic sandstone public buildings. Some of the areas of Widnes are lovely too, Widnes is essentially a conurbation on a tiny scale, several villages all being enveloped into a sizable town. Appleton, Farnworth and Cronton all have there green areas. Cronton having Pex Hill and Appleton having Victoria Park.

And its on Victoria Park that i want to focus, When i was a kid the park was my home away from home, be back from school then straight out to play a game very loosely based on football (all with enough time left over to be a geek, amazing). Its actually a very good park, its a fair size, has tennis and basketball courts and a skatepark. It also for some reason now has a climbing rock (is the council begging for some cocky little shit to fall off inebriated on blue WKD and try to sue for negligence). Now the council and a team of volunteers are putting a lot of effort into introducing wildlife. We have a pond, which already has geese, swans, moor hens and ducks (and duckings) and a nature trial though the wooded area.

welcome and also hi, i'm treebeard

a batcave, but where does the mobile go?

a carved rabbit

woody woodpecker!, i'll just go shall i?

Oh the options,

After struggling to find journalist work after my contract not being renewed at the Scottie Press I have what may prove to be salvation. However this lies at the other end of 20,000 leagues, no wait I mean words, to be honest it’s not the amount of words that I find daunting, its what to write about. When faced with something as impossibly open like this I tend to become just a little indecisive and lost. Twenty thousand may seem like an awful lot but I have written essays half that size in little under a day. 

Easy, but what do I focus on? Spoilers, it may be for a German magazine so politics and unemployment, two subjects I can rave on are out the window, anyway I will hopefully soon come to me in a flash of inspiration, that or I’ll fail badly and cry.

A day in Liverpool

We saw lots, Matisse, the big Henry the eighth (I am, I am) and also a Banksy, I've liked his work for a while but never been a huge fanboy.
Anyway here's 'Cardinal sin'.

Cafe

As I have been tearing though my garden of late, getting everything ready for a nice summer. Well judging by the march weather we've been having this is probably our summer now.

In my garden i have an old coffee table, not sure why I bought it, its not the prettiest item. Now the dilemma is this, its a little too large to fit in a wheelie bin. Throws a spanner into the whole clear out plan really. After ripping its legs of and cutting it down I was feeling pretty triumphant.

It still Does not fit.

It's now the only thing left in my garden that's not growing or sitting related. But while watching 'Le Salvager' the other week I was hit with twin bolts of inspiration. Not only would I re purpose the table, a drew an idea for a sign from a 'cafe' in the opening credits. Because the table lacks legs, it is essentially just a big wooden sign, so i drew up a stencil and opened some rather fetching paint.

the stencil in situ

red equals class

Stay tuned as I'll be adding to it here and there over the weeks to come

Panoramic III

Panoramic II

Ebay

I do love Ebay,
the rush you get for winning is like spitting in Gods Face.

Honey mustard gammon

When you want a good sandwich, you need a good filling And nothing makes a good sandwich like ham.
Making your own ham is delicious and actually pretty cheap. Consider how much you spend on a packet of cheap smart price ham, chances are you won't be getting better than one pound per one hundred grams. Now the bit of gammon in the picture cost five pounds and weighs 1.2 kilos. For the same weight of packaged ham your looking at twelve pounds.

To cook the gammon it's three easy steps,
First, stud the ham with cloves and boil with peppercorns and onion in salted water for around two hours.
Second, make a simple glaze of honey, and mustard, remove the skin and rub the glaze all over.
Third, roast the gammon for half an hour in a hot oven.

Ta da! Carve thickly and enjoy (if you let it cool it's a little easier to carve).

Panoramic

Lunch in the garden

With a little sun, nothing like eating outside

Just a thought...

Is it me or does the 'united nations' sound like a group of super heroes while the 'Arab league' sounds like the villains.

Meatballs

Because I'm lazy I'll just be showing you a real easy recipe this week, Spaghetti. Now there are endless variations on how to cook up a la bologna, but I'll show you mine. It's really very simple.

Firstly I prefer meatballs over mince any day, so how do you make simple meatballs?

Well, quite simply with meat. In the picture above i have used 200g of minced steak, almost every meat is suitable for meatballs (try half pork, half beef). You can add egg, breadcrumbs etc... but to be honest just by adding a little salt you can shape the balls well enough. I have added a little paprika and oregano (O REG GANO if your American, ORI GANO if sensible) as well as basic seasoning to mine.

To cook, seal off the meatballs in a little olive oil until nicely browned. Remove to a baking tray and finish in a oven at 200 degrees c for roughly quarter of an hour.

And now how to make the sauce

To make a good Italian sauce all you need is onion, garlic and tomato. But we'll add to this a little, firstly fry some sliced or diced onions in the same pan you used for the meatballs, we want to use all that meaty fat left over, add crushed garlic to the party and cook lightly till soft. Add a couple of good sized chopped tomatoes and simmer till reduced alittle, and basically your there, when you cook the pasta (in salted water with a good splash of olive oil) reserve alittle oil to loosen the sauce, add the meatballs to the pan to warm and serve over the pasta, which will have been drained and tossed with olive oil and black pepper.

Et Viola, bein appreveche

(none of the above is Italian)

Jansson's Temptation,

Scandinavians are cool, that's a fact. But one things always worried me and that's the food. Every time I have saw pictures in books it all looks distinctly eighties, the bad sort of eighties, now surely that can't be right? Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland have gave us some brilliant design quirks as well as this excellent movie.

No they have a healthy coffee and cake culture that i'll be exploring in the near future, but what about food? Well I have been experimenting Viking style. The first dish that i have tried is 'Jansson's Temptation' (Jansson's Frestelse), This is quite a traditional Swedish dish that was apparently born when an explorer was lost and only had potatoes, cream, onions and anchovies in his pack.

Here's what you'll need,

Jansson's Frestelse,

(Makes Two)

500g Potatoes

2 Cloves Garlic

2 Onions

Anchovies

Butter

Thyme

150ml Cream

Breadcrumbs

How to,

1, Peel and grate the potatoes and squeeze out any excess moisture.

2, Gently fry the garlic and add the onions, Diced or sliced its up to you. Cook lightly till golden and add half a tin of anchovies and a little oil.

3, After letting the onion mix cool, its time to start building, start with a layer of potato (i used a nice earthenware dish, looks are important) then the onion, garlic and anchovies mix, on top of this add the thyme before topping wish the rest of the potato.

4, pour the cream over the dish, topping off with a little milk if necessary.

5, Sprinkle with breadcrumbs (an easy way to get good breadcrumbs is to let a slice of bread dry out in a warm oven and then break it up with your fingers) and dot with butter.

6, After forty five minutes at two hundred degrees Celsius it should be light golden on top and ready to eat.

Scandinavia

It has to be said I did really enjoy this, I served it with a pan roasted fillet of Lamb and a red wine sauce. I think the only thing i would consider changing is the anchovies, maybe reducing the amount a little. They tasted good, its just the smell while cooking was, ermm prominent.

Tabletop General

While I have dabbled in Warhammer for a few (actually, while in my head it only seems like two, three. I have been playing for more like ten, with a year or two hiatus during university) years, last week was the first competitive games I have ever played.

The tournament was held at a local gaming club, well local-ish, in Stockport. The points value was 600 meaning short and brutal games, the usual points value being 1750, they numbered five in total and their were fourteen competitors. After much deliberation I decided to field an army of Lamentors, Blood angels successor chapter, this was largely due to there fantastic back story and in know way due to their primary colour being yellow.

sorry about the quality

600 points doesn't leave you with many options and it can be quite hard to come up with a good list, the one I settled on is as follows,

HQ,

Liberian with Blood Lance and Fear of Darkness, a very fitting an effective pys power.

ELITE,

Furiso Dreadnought in a drop pod with Frag Cannon and Melta, The frag cannon more than makes up for the lack of an initial charge.

TROOPS,

Five man Assault Squad, Melta, Rhino.

Five man Scout Squad, Sniper rifles, Missile.

FAST ATTACK

Baal Predator, Assault Cannons.

The Liberian hitches a lift with the Assault Squad and they Melta and Fear anything from the table as a clean up crew at the end. The Baal, thanks to its scout and fast vehicle status takes command of the centre and pours its fire where needed. The scouts suck cover and hold objective and the Dreadnought drops down and causes havoc.

So I'm sure your all itching to know how it went, well I came fifth, with a lot of dispute over fourth. Actually turns out I should of placed fourth(I knew Necrons couldn't stand back up when fleeing). Still fifth out of fourteen in my first official tournament is an excellent starting point. It now leaves me ranked 380^th in the country at Warhammer 40k, how 'bout that?

Heritage and Parsnips

Well After working on my garden for a few days i feel like progress is being made and I its time to think about what to grow, oh what fun! The possibilities are very nearly endless, there a lot of veg out there, but also a lot of different varieties. One thing i want to try growing however is parsnips, I really, Really love parsnips, no other vegetable can even hope to compete with the mighty Parsnip.

They a very British plant, growing well in our colder climate (in fact the taste better after a frost) and are very under estimated. Many people are familiar with them at Christmas, but i believe no dinner is a roast without a whole dish of these sweet roots. Apparently the French only used them for cattle fodder, further proof that Franks are not the be all end all of food.

This year in my garden I'm heavily considering growing a lot of heritage fruit, not only will this be keeping alive olde English traditions, you'll also invariably get more interesting produce. So up above you'll see the first purchased seeds for my spring garden. Until next time.

Three days in..

Ah just noticed its actually four. But lets begin, (actually on a side note, my pissing space bar is playing up, you reading this have absolutely no idea how irritating this is getting.) This is the time of the year when people start making outlandish claims as to what they are going to give up, but won't. This leaves two options.

1- Give up something you don't do, i.e. I know I'll quit smoking as I don't smoke.

2- Really, really try.

Now we all know which is the easy option, but lets try shall we? And lets pick something good, I personally like the idea of choosing to do something rather than cutting something out. The obvious being to get into shape, loose weight etc....BORING. You won't do it, not even till February.
My resolution is to have a go at forging my small concrete jungle into something life sustaining. Last year I didn't grow a thing and with spring just around the corner (unless there have been some rather serious changes that I don't know about) now is a good time to start planning.

Firstly, reclaim and clean. I need to take back the land, this will be a protracted campaign involving tools and bin bags. Its a little shocking how quickly junk can accumulate. Once all the rubbish has been cleared its time to take stock of what we have to work with. Really not much indeed. I have one actual patch of earth two metres by point five and several 50cm2 containers. Not a lot.

Not in previous years I have produced staples, such as potatoes, carrots, but really considering size restraints I can't afford to grow these ready available and cheap foods, so the plan is to grow more interesting fare. One thing we will definitely grow is leeks. Leeks are really nice, and astonishingly, to me at least, expensive to grow. Squashes and sweet potatoes, things I love but my GF won't touch and chillies. So in the coming weeks regeneration will start and magic will be sown. That's the idea at least.

Also, my last post concerned a rather curious book, that's fallen by the wayside due to lots of very interesting books (something Christmas hasn't helped at all) anyway, that will be back. Eventually.