Friday, October 29, 2004

Sponge puddings - the dangers...

Never mind asteroids, the greatest danger facing mankind are those tinned sponge puddings - the sort you cook by putting the unopened can in a saucepan of boiling water - they are not to be trusted...

The first time this happened to me was back in '82 or so. There were a bunch of us getting quietly stoned while watching the Blues Brothers, and as it finished I suddenly remembered that I'd put one of those damned puddings on to boil before the film started. I let out a startled cry of "Pudding!", which caused everyone to look at me rather strangely, except for a guy called Jim - who wasn't into drugs and so reacted faster - who did a classic double-take "Pudding ? Pudding !" before leaping to his feet and charging off.

The sound of his footsteps could be heard as he ran down the stairs, then just as they stopped there was a dull thump as the pudding exploded. There was a pause, then we heard footsteps slowly returning back up the stairs, and Jim appeared in the doorway with one side of his body covered in steaming bits of treacle and sponge.

I was laughing so much it nearly didn't hurt when he kneed me in the groin. . .

Two years later I made the same mistake again. This time I wandered into the kitchen having completely forgotten about the two puddings I'd put on earlier and came face to face with the damned things myself. They'd already boiled dry and the tins had swollen up until they were nearly spherical. They were jumping around in the saucepan, with droplets of solder sweating on the seams. I took one look at this vision of hell, ducked below the top of the cooker and scuttled out of the kitchen in blind panic. I ran into the living room where Jim was reading and shouted "Pudding !" at him. His book went flying, he jumped up and ran into the kitchen with me following close behind, and there was another cartoon moment as he rushed up to the cooker, peered down into the saucepan then tried to back away hurriedly only to collide with me as I arrived. After a moment or two of sliding about on the floor we managed to turn the cooker off before they exploded.

"What the fuck did you call me for ?!"

"Don't fucking ask me ! Pudding, man ! Pudding !"

It was decided to give puddings a miss after that. Jim told everyone that I couldn't be trusted anywhere near one, and even I couldn't deny that I'd panicked and run round like a headless chicken.

Some months later, I arrived back at the flat to be met at the door by Jim.

"Don't come in"

"Why not ?"

"Don't ask. Just bugger off for a few hours"

Behind him, I noticed the kitchen ceiling was liberally covered with strawberry pudding. After all the shit I'd put up with he'd gone and done it himself. Revenge was sweet ;)

Bad Brain day #2

While wandering round a book shop with my fairly sizable wife today I was caught looking at a picture of some scantily-clad female celeb or other. SWMBO gave me a pointed look and caught on the hop I muttered:

"Just being curious dear - it's a bit like a woman but thin in the middle"

Is that the time? Better creep into bed and hope she doesn't wake up...

Bad Brain day #1

Today, for example, I wandered out of bed at about 1pm, as is my wont, and meandered downstairs to find Jan waving a box with what seemed to be a roll of scented wall-paper inside it. Apparently she'd been buying presents for my mother's birthday:

"Uh?" I grunted, brain firing on at least one cylinder.

"It's lining paper. For drawers. Makes them smell nicer"

"Ah. Isn't that rather uncomfortable?" <- Missing the point mode.

Then when that was explained she produced various scented soaps.

"She'll think you think she stinks" <- SOH failure mode.

Then she produced a ceramic, well, thing. It was teapot shaped and flat, with a recess. A bit like a squashed ashtray. She waved it at me and said rather belligerently:

"Last time we were there I noticed she didn't have one of these"

[Look of total incomprehension. Why the fuck would a non-smoker have a squashed ceramic ashtray?]

"It's for teabags. You put them in it."

[Even blanker look. You clearly wouldn't get more than a mouthful of tea out of it. What is she going on about?]

". . . after you've used them. . ."

[Simon decides today is not to his liking. Returns to bed.]

Monday, October 11, 2004

Hot melt glue - it shrinks

Aaargh. One of those days... I spent a while lining up this thrice-damned switch before gluing it into place. Had to be careful, it's the only one we have handy for this 'ere prototype. It was perfect, if I say so myself. But now, a few hours later, when I try it again the damned thing doesn't toggle, presumably because the glue's shrunk just enough to screw the alignment up. Poot! Pootitty poot!! Oh, damn it all to heck ;)

Friday, October 08, 2004

It's a brain, Jim

I'm starting to hate dreamweaver. It creates tables it can't even preview properly, so what chance does anything else have?

And I'm almost sure it's responsible for some very dodgy Javascript. Hmmm...

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Not-so-dynamic HTML

Well, just spent a happy hour writing some Delphi code to take a list of files and descriptions of them and make a HTML document out of them... There's probably a million other ways to do this but at least this way I can tinker with it ;)

Stunningly unexciting example of a generated filelist at httphttp://www.desdes.com/downloads/downloads.htm

And now on with something to generate photo pages...

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Test

Well, yet another thing to learn. Joy...

Hmm. Interesting, you can edit existing blogs. That might make for some creative reinterpretation...