rory's blog

A Middle Eastern salad. As bulghur wheat is precooked this salad requires only soaking and no real cooking. You can serve it on a plate with other salads, such as bean and yoghurt salads or with whole aubergines (egg plants).

In Lebanon, they like to pick up this salad with the crisp inner leaves of cos lettuce.

It only takes 10 minutes to make but you need to let the bulghur wheat soak for 2 hours.

Traditionally this 'pesto' - sauce is served with new potatoes that have been roasted in their skins in olive oil. It is equally delicious when the potatoes have been steamed or boiled. Fresh rather than dried thyme is essential.

Once you've got all the ingredients this is really easy to make - this recipe has become an essential ingredient at any summer BBQ at the McPherson's.

Delicious and easy main course that is extremely succulent. It only takes minutes to prepare, however it takes 3 hours to roast.

Below are various improvements to the only family photograph that we have.  Bill took it back in 2005, however he must have moved because the image in the original is slightly blurred - that is what I am trying to improve. 

I have tried various techniques in the Gimp and I think that with more work the grain merge technique looks the most promising - what do think?  I know it is too light but I think with more work I can correct this.  Which effort should I spend most time on?  I also tried cropping the image slightly in two of the images to remove the date...again what do you think?  I know that sharpening will enhance even the blurred edges so I think that's out and I will also reduce the reflections in the glasses.

Please note these images are very low quality, so please don't bother printing them.

With all the coverage of TPB in the media at the present time perhaps now is the time to look at alternatives.  I know that TPB is not going away soon whilst the appeals process is ongoing and the servers have been relocated to the Netherlands (and alternatives will pop-up) - but take a look at oneswarm. It's available for Linux as well as windows.  I think some kind of anomynity giving client will be the future of p2p, whether it's oneswarm or some other piece of software - it will happen.

Oneswarm is a friend-to-friend 'darknet' file sharing protocol so will probably take off in university campuses first, you can watch a video here that explains oneswarm.

I have put a new theme on this website - it's called moleskine and is supposed to be in the style of the Moleskine notebooks - I think it's kinda steampunk . 

Why?  Just because I fancied a change.  I have altered the theme not to underline any links and also changed the home logo at the top of this page to a hat.  I am going to perfect my php and css skills so that I can create themes myself - so one day there will be a RAM Theme.

I don't care that:

I was reading my rss feeds the other day and came across this website which led me onto this one. I now tie my shoe laces with Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot.

It doesn't take any longer and is far more secure - and I don't have to retie my shoes during the day.

Last Saturday I spent the afternoon out with Mike photographing the sea front in Southend. Here are a few photos.

I just came across this great resource.  It is full of creative commons media - that's film, audio content and books.  You could download old classic radio episodes and listen to them on your media player.  You can legally download all the media in a variety of formats depending on your connection speed and how much resolution you want.  I suggest you download the MPEG4 file and use VLC or mplayer to watch it.

Ian you should definitely take a look here.  There is a vast range of content so take a look.

Yesterday at 12pm I went to St Mary's Church in East Finchley for the Repose of Alisdair's Soul. I think that it has put (as Alisdair would say) closure on his death. I also think that he would have liked the Latin and ceremony of the Mass.