Category: Actual Blogging (Page 1 of 7)

6 ways I fought food blandness after (mostly) quitting meat

cashew nuts in a bowl

Six or seven years ago I became a dreaded ‘flexitarian’.

Not fully my choice, really – like Jules in Pulp Fiction, my partner went veggie so I pretty much had to as well. I somewhat resented the hassle at first, but in the ensuing years I’ve found that the maxim ‘constraints breed creativity’ can be applied to cooking, too. And it’s followed that I’ve gone on to think of cooking not just as a means to produce edible food, but an entire creative pursuit in itself, with the same rewards and frustrations as any other.

I suppose the first step to reconfiguring how I thought about cooking was to approach it as a battle against blandness. If you’re cutting out a sizeable part of your diet, what’s left needs to be appealing and satisfying. So I thought I’d make a list of things that have helped me fight that battle. Will the war ever be won? ‘Tis not for me to say. All I can do is remain resolute, put my faith in capers, and try to endure.

Continue reading

Introducing Waterman’s Fortnightly

Waterman's Fortnightly newsletter

Waterman’s Fortnightly is a new thing I’m doing every, er, fortnight or so. It’s a newsletter covering interesting things, with a slight slant towards digital content and community stuff.

This is a glimpse of the fourth one – if you find it interesting you might want to sign up for future dispatches.

  • Has any work software ever received as much glowing coverage as Slack? You can barely open a browser without encountering an article claiming how it’s set to change workplace culture forever
  • …depending on your workplace. The majority of office workers are more likely to identify with the story of the US government employee who worked from the bathroom in order to bypass his employer’s IT security measures.
  • Slack is supposed to be so compulsive that users are reluctant to leave the office. And while we’re all addicted to web-enabled devices these days, this dispatch from 1982 illustrates computers’ ability to transfix us before you could even do much with them.
  • If smug Slackers’ screenshots are the summit of #LoveMyJob self-satisfaction, what’s the opposite? Toshers are certainly contenders for Quite Likely The Worst Job Ever, having made their living sifting through raw sewage in 19th century London. Pure-finders run them close, though.

Shared recently in Non-Fiction Addiction

The self-castrated hatmaker who killed the guy who killed Abraham Lincoln; why the FBI investigated The Kingsmen and their hit ‘Louie Louie’; what became of the children who survived the Holocaust; and more at Non-Fiction Addiction.

A little suntin suntin for the marketomatons

Links for online content and marketing folk. Skip ahead to Phew glad that bit’s over if that sentence makes you spit chips.

Phew, glad that bit’s over

Stuart Waterman

 

Secrid Miniwallet v. Jimi wallet: woyal wallet wumble

I hate fat wallets, and I cannot lie. And I don’t want to end up like this guy:

This is why, a few years ago, I started using a Jimi wallet. A slim, hard plastic card wallet billed as ‘The wallet for people who hate wallets’, the Jimi wallet won’t be to everyone’s taste. What you gain in svelteness of wallet, you lose in… well, it’s hard plastic. If you’re used to leather, the Jimi wallet could feel a bit tacky. You also lose the compartment where you store your money. That’s not a big deal to me as I tend to carry it loose, but I appreciate that for others this is the raison d’etre for having a wallet.

Anyway, my Jimi boy has been on its last legs for a few months now. The plastic fold that acts as a hinge has half-torn, and I managed to snap off half of a piece of its innards, which means I have a jagged piece of plastic about to slice my fingers every time I open it up.

I got some good usage out of my Jimi wallet, and I was quite prepared to buy another one (albeit perhaps in a snazzier colour than the original, which was black). However, it seems they’re a bit harder to get hold of in the UK these days, and I wasn’t inclined to pay for international shipping. So I started researching alternatives, which is how I encountered the Secrid range – and after one look at the Secrid Miniwallet’s whizzy card release mechanism, I was pretty much sold. At the time of writing I’ve owned it for about three weeks, and am thus far very happy with it.

Secrid is a Dutch brand whose wallets all contain an aluminium RFID card protector (one of the wallets even contains two of them). They call this feature, enigmatically, the Cardprotector. The Cardprotector is intended to prevent your RFID cards – that is, travel passes, chipped debit/credit cards, etc – from being read when they shouldn’t be. The card release mechanism means you can eject your cards and select the one you want to use at any particular time.

For anyone else wondering about the pros and cons of a Secrid Miniwallet versus a Jimi wallet, here are my findlings. I’ve compared them on price, size, style, bouncebackability, durability and capacity.

Continue reading

Complimented by a BAFTA-winner, no biggie

New Star Soccer retirement suggestions by Stuart Waterman

New Star Soccer. To paraphrase Foreigner, I’ve been waiting for a game like this to come into my life.

I won’t bang on about it, but if you’re into football and you haven’t played it, downstall New Star Soccer into your device immediately (but not if you have exams or important stuff coming up – this thing will eat your life). It beat some big guns to win a BAFTA Games award earlier this year, in a victory pleasingly comparable to, say, Rotherham United beating Chelsea in the FA Cup final.

If you’ve played the game you’ll know there are elements of New Star Soccer that could be improved. And, like any good modern-day outfit, the company behind the game tends to ask for opinions/suggestions from users through sozialmedia. I happened to have some time on my hands, so I submitted my suggestions regarding incorporating players’ retirement age into the game on their Facebook page.

They were warmly received by the person behind the feed, who I believe is the game’s creator, Simon Read. I reproduce them here for posterity/royalties should they be taken up in the next update of the game.

Continue reading

« Older posts

© 2024

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑