Posts by Tom Semmens
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Hmmm, wouldn't some sort of rubbing alcohol mixed with icing sugar achieve a similar outcome? Unless the bang is part of the appeal.
PS don't search online for "cooking with explosives" you'll end up with sites telling you how to manufacture homemade C4 and a flag on your file with the NSA.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Richard Ram,
A device: We don't have gas, so I have one of those cheap Warehouse single burner cast iron jobbies from our clever friends in China and a small gas bottle that fits perfectly on the bench top. Great for stirfries and steaks, and the leaping flames make for much more fun when cooking, especially when paired with wine.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Gareth,
Unfortunately, the perfect fluffy chip/chunk is a triumph of the interaction of fats with potato. :(
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Gareth,
Personally, I would use a more flavour neutral oil with a higher smoke point than olive oil for frying my chips, to reduce the risk of burning the oil and affecting the flavour. A higher smoke point also means you don’t need to watch the oil so closely. And I would do a two fry process rather than a boil/fry like you suggest, with the first blanching being at a lower temperature – somewhere between 120-130 degrees, the second cook at the 170-190 degrees range. Oh yes, and if you have the time, don't forget to soak your raw chips in water in the fridge overnight to get as much starch out as possible.
Cooking chips is an area I am a bit of an expert in, I grew up out the back of the various shops of my mum and dad’s fish and chip empire back when fish and chip shops still made their own chips.
Oh and if you can’t be bother forking out for an expensive pizza stone, I found an old 10mm thick, 350x350mm square ceramic floor tile lying outside a house renovation job years and years ago and it is perfect for the job.
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Hard News: The future: be careful what…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
but I can ski in a fast but untidy fashion
Hmmm, you don't have to be a new age crystal healer to predict some sort of relationship in your future with someone whose initials are "ACC".
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Hard to see where the improvement is with this.
Personally, I can't see any great improvement, beyond saving me money by getting some competition which will cut the cost of pay TV for me.
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SKY has ruined rugby IMHO…there is just too much.
Not so much Sky as professionalism.
Professionalism of anything – be it armies, sport, or politics – tends to be the end of mass participation.
Just BTW, isn’t piracy the elephant in the room of this new internet broadcasting model? Now it is right thar on your screen, what would stop Sergei and his fellowing internauts paying for the Super Rugby feed then re-broadcasting it from supercheaprugby.ru for free except for a pile of ads?
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I wasn't trolling, I was having a bit of fun.
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Rugby is possibly in about as much trouble as Sky…
Soccer is where the whiny progeny of middle class one child families end up after being bundled out of the SUV on Saturday morning. There, their parents can express their major anxiety issues about their petal’s well being by looking drawn and ashen every time a boy who looks like he might be a bit bigger or rougher challenges their little darling for the ball. As soon as they get a chance, these kids ditch their soccer boots for something bit riskier. This usually involves doing something egotistical and suicidal on a board, like surfing or skate/snowboarding – the level of danger being set by the desire of the youth in question to over-compensate for the surly bonds of over-controlling parental servitude.
Those born of the less anxious or less caring walk to school and still play contact sports with an oval ball, where they discover manly virtues like stoicism and courage in way not likely to give them a death wish in their later teens/early twenties. And because they enjoy it, they are more likely to keep playing when they get older.
And thus, all is good in God’s own land.
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This move by Coliseum raises the whole question of the hopelessly outdated and out-manoeuvred Kiwi share. How much content (not to mention government services) need to go solely online before our major political parties wake up to the realisation that a broadband internet connection is now an essentially a human right in an advanced first world country? We wouldn't be couching this discussion in terms "be careful what you wish for" if we approached internet access from a first principle that in 2013 internet access is as basic a requirement to be a fully participating citizen as the universal franchise itself.
Personally, I'd abandon Kiwi share as a relic of the 1980s and instead do a deal with a telco to provide free of charge to all homes that want one a broadband router connected to a free government portal that allowed access to a restriction portfolio of sites - anything ending with .govt.nz, for example (and make radio NZ radionz.govt.nz while you were at it). The government could then negotiate with private providers as to who else might want in to access to the free state portal - for example, agree to do a deal with Microsoft to automatically give all New Zealanders a free outlook.com email address and a Skype account. And if such a portal existed, then it would be but a small matter for the government to do deals around free-to-portal sporting content via a state run online content provider.
This does create an ideological issue around net neutrality, but from the perspective of not being able to afford a phone line or an internet connection then high minded musing by typically well connected themselves internet commentators about net neutrality looks absurdly moot. And of course, a controlled portal means no politician could be attacked for providing free online porn to the nation.
Just for once, I would like to see a political party be bold on this sort of thing - although I am (perhaps foolishly) assuming that the SkyCity corporate box at Eden Park isn't a dual use one with Sky TV.