- Cream
- Stewed Apple
- Chocolate Sauce using O’Conaill’s Chocolate
- Lemon Juice
= Pancakes!
The woman is beyond compare.
Browsing Posts published in February, 2006
I’m not a radio person so I tend to miss a wealth of interesting programmes, particularly in the evenings. I have only just found out about Winter Food on RTE1 presented by Cork’s own Clodagh McKenna. I was very happy to see that recordings of the show (and archives) were available. Unfortunately there are a few problems, but I have solutions to some of them:
[1] The shows are in Real Player rm format rather than MP3. Luckily my MP3 player is Real Audio on a Palm so it isn’t actually a problem for me.
[2] There is no RSS feed for this programme. RTE actually do have RSS feeds for their top level stuff like the news but not fine-grained to enable me to subscribe to updates on Winter Food.
In fact, what the hell is stopping them from going the whole hog and embracing podcasting properly and making all of their programming available via something like Podcast Alley? Today FM do it for Gift Grub on iTunes but obviously we don’t want anything which makes people install that dire software on their PCs. They should have a look over at The Restaurant Guys in New Jersey – a food programme on a commercial radio station (WCTC) that is fully setup for MP3 downloads to anyone worldwide.
Does anyone know what RTE’s intentions are in this area as a publicly funded broadcaster? It would take minimal capital investment to set this up. I know I’d spend a lot more time listening to RTE programmes if I could dictate when I get to listen to their output on the move.
[3] You can’t actually download the files for later listening, you have to listen to them in realtime on your computer. This is the same stupid limitation set by BBC radio which I found a solution for when I wanted to grab the H2G2 broadcasts from last year. Follow my instructions over at this post (mainly to do with setting up MPlayer), find out when the programme you want was broadcast e.g. February 18th and then download it using MPlayer using a command line in a DOS prompt like the following:
mplayer -dumpfile winterfood20060218.ra -dumpstream rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2006/0218/18022006rte-winterfood.rm
Unfortunately this downloads in realtime so it’ll take the full half hour to grab but when it is done you’ll have a Real Audio file to use to your hearts content.
If you need MP3 then you’ll have to grab LAME from here and copy it to the same dir as MPlayer. Then execute the following two commands:
mplayer winterfood20060218.ra -ao pcm -ao pcm:file=winterfood20060218.wav
lame -f winterfood20060218.wav winterfood20060218.mp3
Note that the mplayer step above takes up crazy amounts of disk space (3 meg real audio file becoming a multi-gig wav file) and you may run out if you have a small hard drive.
Of course, what would be far better would be a little script which ran once a week and grabbed the latest episode for you and converted it if needed. I’m gonna have a bit of spare time in the next few weeks so I may hack some travesty of a script together and make it available here.
The above instructions apply to any of the RTE programmes which they make available for later listening. You do have to figure out the “path” to the file which you do as follows: right-click on the “listen to this show” link, save it to your desktop, open the smil file in notepad and find the rstp path in that file and use it in place of the rstp link in the command line above. Hardly slick.
[tags]RTE, Winter Food, Clodagh McKenna, MP3, Real Audio, mplayer, Podcasting, BBC, LAME[/tags]
Kieran from Murphy’s Ice Cream in Dingle posted a comment to this blog last week and let me know that they now have a blog of their own. I’ll probably have to give Catherine a sedative when I tell her that they have a chocolate sauce recipe on it already.
Murphy’s Coffee/Ice-Cream shop was the highlight of our walkabout in Killarney last Autumn. Fab coffee and stunning ice-cream. I just went with a simple double scoop of something fruity and Catherine went for one of their more complex creations. She nearly did a Meg Ryan on it as she worked her way through it. I think it may almost be a case of Comic Book Man from the Simpsons “Best Ice Cream….Ever”. Thinking way back, I’ve a feeling we had some scoops in their Dingle shop maybe 10 years ago? Were they open then? The fact that it still sticks in my mind tells you something about their ice-cream.
I’m thrilled that they are blogging because I am not just married to an ice-cream fanatic but I also recently bought her an ice-cream maker and I think she’ll have the motor burnt out in a month. I just got the cheapy (£25) Kenwood IM-250 from Amazon (I’m sure you can get it in many department stores in Ireland). I didn’t want to spend too much in case it turned out to be too much hassle to use one. But it turns out to be very straightforward. So far we have had a few fruity frozen yoghurts and a proper custard based chocolate one. I think Catherine may have found her niche. Christmas may involve the purchase of one of the huge self-cooling machines.
Interestingly, I think that owning an ice-cream maker will cause us to buy more ice-cream rather than less as we try out flavours and compare textures. I highly recommend that you read Kieran’s blog, post lots of comments, tell him all your ice-cream fantasies and most important of all – seek out their ice-cream!
I’m really looking forward to reading more of his thoughts and to buying more of their fantastic produce in Urru in Bandon.
UPDATE 1: I’ve obviously lost a lot of brain cells over the years, Murphy’s only opened in 2000 so I must have been somewhere else in Dingle back in the 90′s.
[tags]Murphy’s Ice-Cream, Dingle, An Daingean, Killarney, Urru[/tags]
It’s been a long wait but the man who put the AMS is Amstrad is back on our screens, hurrah! And what a bag of spanners he has collected for this series;
How about the bipolar woman who cried during the first firing cos Sir Alan was mean to the girls? Quite possibly the most annoying woman on British TV after one short episode, so I assume he’ll keep her.
Or Syed who told us that he has a “gameplan” and wants to play mind games but so far seems to have all the cunning of the most cunning plan in cunningland by Baldrick. He is another keeper like Paul last year. No hope of winning but should be good for a weekly laugh.
Or poor Ben who had all the charisma of a corpse and got fired last night after his ass whooping by the women.
I cannot wait for the next 11 epsiodes. TV gold I tell ya.
[tags]The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar, BBC2[/tags]
Dillon’s
Food style/ethnicity: Modern Irish
Chain: N/A
Price: 30 – 40 (Euro)
Location:
Main Street
Timoleague Co Cork
Ireland
Food rating: out of 5
Decor rating: out of 5
Service rating: out of 5
Kind Auntie Fiona took care of our angels on Friday night so Catherine and I could trot down to Timoleague for a bite to eat. Dillon’s gets a strange mini-review in the 2004 edition of Georgina Campbell. It isn’t really clear whether they think much of it. Dillon’s describe themselves as a cafe bar which can mean a wide range of things.
We popped our head in the door to see a normal bar with beer taps but no-one sitting at it and then a bunch of tables with people eating. It was pretty much full at 8pm which is a good sign. Decor is sort of shabby chic with a mix of table and chair types. I loved the look of the bar itself. Nice friendly welcome and we kicked off with two G&T’s.
I started off with duck spring rolls and Catherine had crab cakes. We also ordered a bottle of red Bordeaux at €23 which was excellent and extremely good value. My spring rolls were lovely and came with an unknown but very tasty dipping sauce. Catherine thought her crab cakes were only fine. But both plates were ruined by having a pile of diced generic salad which clearly came from a vac-packed bag and some big lumps of unripe tomato. Nasty and unnecessary. I’d have preferred either nothing or maybe some undressed coleslaw or something seasonal.
The mains were far far better. I had two wee quail which were fab and came with a good sauce. Catherine had the duck which seemed to be a popular choice at other tables too and she thought it was great. Both came with generic microwaved/steamed veg side plate. I’m thinking of starting a campaign to have this banned in restaurants instead of smoking. Nothing wrong with it, nothing right, why bother? Why not add some flavour and make it part of the meal?
Desserts were both superb. I had blueberry creme brulee which was awesome and Catherine had a plate-lickingtastic ice-cream thingy with cherries, nuts and chocolate sauce. Coffees were good too.
Then came the bill: €113! Bloody hell. That is so out of whack with the level of the food, it just is not funny. At maybe €85 I would have left happy but €113 is a similar price to a meal we had in Les Gourmandises which is one of the best restaurants in Munster.
But the place was full of locals and had sounded full the previous night when Catherine had booked, so what do they care what I think. If people are willing to pay way over the odds for mid-range food then let them. But at those prices, I don’t think we’ll be rushing back.
[tags]Dillon’s, Timoleague, Les Gourmandises[/tags]
Only two months later I get around to blogging our Spider Crab adventure from a few weeks before Christmas. We got a massive one for a few euro in Antcar in Union Hall. At this stage Oisín is totally cool with crustaceans, poor Sibéal was a bit shocked when I arrived back to the car with it.
He stayed in the cooler whilst we did the Skibbereen Winter Wonderland. It wasn’t _quite_ Disney but the kids had a howl.
Sophie Grigson laments the lack of interest in spider crab meat in the British Isles and recommends it highly. However she describes the preparation of it as “approaching tedious”. To quote Bill: “Baby, you ain’t kiddin”. Over an hour with pliers and a hammer (yes, from my tool box, yes, washed of all WD-40) to extract a tiny mound of meat.
I did a lovely crab salad and a pseudo dressed crab thingy. Both of them were lip-smackingly good and the meat was really tasty. But I am never, ever prepping one again.
[tags] Antcar, Union Hall, Skibbereen, Winter Wonderland, Spider Crab, Spongebob, Sophie Grigson[/tags]
As I’ve never understood American football, I obviously don’t watch the Superbowl. But this means I only just found out about the Mastercard ad that was on during it. I’m sure Patty and Selma would have swooned through the whole thing.
Richard Dean Anderson is still the man!
[tags]Mastercard, MacGyver, Superbowl, Diggnation, Richard Dean Anderson[/tags]
Ben has just launched a very simple looking but really useful utility over at Freewebtexts. It is a front end to Vodafone Ireland’s web-text facility (other vendors coming) . If you have ever used Voda’s site, you’ll know that it was clearly designed by someone who hates people and wouldn’t know a standard if it came up and head-butted them (web mail that doesn’t work behind many corporate firewalls. What century is this?).
Ben’s applet is a paragon of simple effective functionality. Check it out and let him know what you think. He’ll be adding functionality to it on a regular basis. And no, he doesn’t want people telling him to re-write it as an Ajax app using ROR.
[tags]Freewebtexts, Vodafone, applet[/tags]
Guinness has a blog. All the skinny at gapingvoid.
Looks like a pretty decent attempt at a corporate blog. They have a posting about great Guinness ads. One thing I’ve always hated about their web-site is that if you want to see their genius US ads instead of their dire “meaningful” Irish ones, you have to pretend to be in the US when signing in on the home page. Boys, dump the swimming across the Atlantic crap and give us “Brilliant!” over here please.
[tags]Guinness[/tags]
I think I like Oscar’s Nintendo DS more than he does. He got Karts for christmas and I was blown away by how easy it was to set up with my wireless router so that I could play against other people on the web. Obviously I always come last.
But one of the hinges on the DS broke recently. Looks like a design flaw to me (considering the new DS Lite has a much meatier hinge). Glue would not work. I spent hours searching for replacement parts. Finally, I found a guy on eBay in Pennsylvania who sold replacement cases and would ship to Ireland. $24 plus shipping and a week or so later, I had the case. Then I discovered I needed a special screwdriver to open it. This time Lik-Sang came to the rescue and for a few Euro I got the screwdriver in the post less than a week later.
Last night we took apart the old one, moved all the bits over to the new case and were shocked to find that it worked! Fiddley as f**k but a damn sight cheaper than buying a new one.
But it got me thinking about the DS. It has two ARM CPUs and the main one has about the same welly as a Palm Tungsten T. It has two screens, one of which is touch senstitive and it has Wi-Fi. Would it not strike Nintendo to offer a web-browser as a plug-in cartridge? Or an MP3 player or a multitude of things other than games which would make use of all its features? I know it is outside of their comfort zone and they don’t want to make the mistakes that Nokia made with the N-Gage. But still, it is a PDA in all but software. I fell asleep with that thought in my mind.
Anyway, I start checking blogs this morning and what do I find? Opera are releasing a browser for the DS!! Fan-bloody-tastic. Obviously, I ‘ll be keeping that cartridge for myself and not letting Oscar anywhere near it. I can’t wait to browse the web at a wireless hot-spot in an airport using a kids toy.
And Nintendo are going to release a digital TV receiver for it too. Not so awesome for us as we are now about 8 years behind on getting digital terrestrial tv in Ireland but would be tres cool for Freeview viewers in the UK.
PSP my bum.
[tags]Nintendo DS, DS Parts, DS Karts, Opera, Wi-Fi, PSP, Lik-Sang[/tags]
