That's How It Happened

I've been engaged in an orgy of fine dining over the last 10 days. It's been hard to drag myself back from the heady heights of culinary perfection, back to the drudgery of blogging. I'm off again on my travels on Friday, but will attempt to blog the sights and sounds of the "International Continence Society Meeting 2006" from the road. It won't have the glamour of SXSW, but it ought (at least for me) to be more interesting than the average Burning Man recollection.

I'm in Hong Kong the week after next, and I did feel that I really needed a Wii, until I read this:

While many fret over the high cost and price of the PS3 compared to the competition, iSuppli believes the console provides more processing power and capability than any consumer electronics device in history. Because of this, the PlayStation 3 is a great bargain, well worth its US$599 price and US$840.35 cost, iSuppli believes

(via Robowis2)

Dice stacking, the latest YouTube sensation. David Blaine parodies, the even latester sensation. (both via linkbunnies)

Supper at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon on Monday was sensational. I'm struggling to think of a better meal I've had anywhere ever. My flickr set is up now, with each spectacular course lovingly documented. I'd go as far as to say that my pictures of the GF's pudding are unmissable. It was really that good.

Heston Blumenthal is taking a general pasting from the UK press. These examples from Private Eye and The Digested Read set the tone.

Chunky extract from the new Pynchon for those that can't wait.

Is this a repost? Because it's still incredible. The DVD is on my xmas list. More absolutely crazy footage here, and here.

This is what "Grain mustard ice cream with red cabbage gazpacho" looked like when I ate at The Fat Duck in June. Heston Blumenthal does write up lots of his recipes, but this one isn't available yet. Determined to reverse engineer the recipe myself, I quickly discovered that some determined Knorr home economist has done the hard work with this plausible gazpacho recipe. I've adapted it slightly below. The accompanying ice cream suggestion is poor though. I decided to make my own ice cream using Heston's own Guinness mustard recipe.

Serves 2
For the mustard:
One jar black mustard seeds (approx 50g)
50mls Guinness
50mls red wine vinegar
Allspice/seasoning as available

Mix all ingredients in a jar, seal and store overnight. By the morning the seeds will have swollen up to reach the surface of the Guinness/vinegar mix. At this stage you can blend it until it reaches your ideal colour and consistency.

For the Gazpacho:
1/3rd of a red cabbage
1/4 of a cucumber
1 smoked garlic clove
Red chilli, pepper, salt to taste.
One slug olive oil
150mls vegetable stock
I tbsp red wine vinegar
100ml apple juice
½ tsp paprika
I slice of crumbed white bread

Add all the ingredients in a blender, and puree as finely as possible. Hot smoked garlic is preferable to uncooked garlic, as it has a much milder flavour. Pass the whole sodden mess through a tamis, Thomas Keller style, until it forms a thin soup. Chill in fridge.

For the ice cream:
200ml double cream
20g caster sugar
100mls whole milk
3 egg yolks
20mls honey (home-made where possible)
3 tablespoons whole grain mustard (see below)

Heat the milk and cream until it starts to bubble, then pour onto the egg yolks and whisk. Transfer the egg/cream/milk back into the still warm pan and continue to whisk, add the sugar and honey, and continue to stir until melted and thickening. Now transfer while still warm into a cold ice cream maker, and set it running. Add the mustard after the ice cream starts to freeze, so you can judge the flavour accurately.

This is the result, which despite my poor photography, was a close match for the original, both in taste and appearance. The mustard/gazpacho combination works brilliantly. I think when we had it at the Fat Duck, the ice cream was resting on a tiny bed of chopped green cabbage, but that may just have been a seasonal variation.

Lifehacker's Guide to Cameraphone Photography has a lot of good tips. I think they missed the one essential tip though. Without really sophisticated control of exposure and white balance, you should expect to need a little reworking of your photos after you download them. I took this shot on my Nokia N80, and it came out so well only because the N80 is actually a decent camera. However it's equally important that I spent some time to adjust the exposure, contrast, and saturation.

The recent democrat Google-bomb may or may not have made any difference in the mid-terms. The most successful google-bomb of all time almost certainly did play a role in defeating Rick Santorum though. Dan Savage revels in his success with an an extended eulogy:

"The man clearly doesn't get—never got, still doesn't get—what this country is all about. America is a better place now that Rick Santorum has been wiped from the U.S. Senate. It's something to celebrate—so why not whip up a little santorum with someone you love?"

Banksy has been under heavy attack of late. First there was the fiasco w/r/t the elephant in the room LA gallery. Then he got a thorough kicking from Charlie Brooker:

"Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her.
Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff. Wow. In an instant, your worldview changes forever. Your eyes are opened. Staggering away, mind blown, you flick v-signs at a Burger King on the way home. Nice one Banksy! You've shown us the truth, yeah?"

For me though, the killer blow is the news that Damian Hirst is a big collector of Banksy. In the Guardian preview of the upcoming Hirst curated show we learn that:

"He has six or seven Jeff Koons, some Richard Princes, a tranche of Banksys. He particularly likes his Banksys, including the iconic naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack whom Banksy depicts holding hands with Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald."

If Banksy has any "genius", rather than just a canny sense for self-promotion, it's as a situationist. His pieces work only in the context of the street; as populist art for the mindless commuter drones. The slideshow of the new Hirst show looks great, but Banksy doesn't belong in a real gallery. He clearly sold-out long ago. Sadly though, for someone who poses as an outsider, mainstream acceptance also removes any remaining shreds of credibility.

When you sign up as a stealth marketer at ReviewMe you get the opportunity to review products for cash. To entice you to join, ReviewMe are blowing $25k of seed capital by paying for reviews of their own site. You could stop reading this post right now, and I'd have earned $30 anyway. Even without that kind of big money:

"...it's an honor to subtly plug something I actually believe in for once. I'm so in love with this one-of-a-kind soda website, I want to shout its product name from the rooftops of a lower-to-middle-class neighborhood! Preferably one with an elementary school nearby, where consumers are still young enough that their brand loyalty is not yet fully established. I know it sounds crazy, maybe even a little scary, but honestly, True Blue ReviewMe is just that good."

Read more from The Onion's take on stealth marketing. I actually have no ethical concerns about accepting paid blog assignments. The "rules" insist that you disclose each review as sponsored, so it's not strictly stealthy, and there's no coercion to produce a positive review. It's giving me some insight into what it must be like to be a pro-blogger, grubbing about for any old story, and desperate for a freebie or even a press-pass.

One of the "letters rounds" in this afternoon's Countdown provided the most unintentionally hilarious moment, possibly ever, or at least since the infamous "WANKERS" outtake. When faced with the above letters, Word-geek Contestant No. 1 declared a "dodgy eight" of "OPERANTS", whereupon Word-geek Contestant No. 2, smugly announced his nine letter "PATRONISE".

The Sun reported today on The Heart Attack Grill, where this monster 2lb "Quadruple Bypass Burger", is served by a waitron dressed as a nurse. To complete the theme, the grill chef dresses in scrubs, and wheelchairs are available to help you make it back out to the carpark. If the threat of consuming 8,000 calories of lard wasn't warning enough, there's also a lawsuit mandated disclaimer on the website:

"*The use of the word "Nurse" above is only intended as a parody. None of the women pictured on our website actually have any medical training, nor do they attempt to provide any real medical services. It should be made clear that the Heart Attack Grill and its employees do NOT offer any therapeutic treatments (aside from laughter) whatsoever."

It's going on my list of must visit US burger joints, somewhere behind Louis Lunch, In N Out, and DB Bistro.

There is a lot of controversy about when, or even if, we will reach peak oil production. One concern is that we might not even recognise peak oil until after it has passed. My "wisdom of crowds" based proposal for predicting the date of peak oil, would be to monitor the incidence of news reports of research claiming that something outlandish might one day be used for power. Up until the date of peak oil, "blue sky" research into energy saving is clearly a growth industry, but once peak oil passes, we'll all be too busy stockpiling canned foods, and fortifying our homes, to listen to scientists. Some current suggestions for future power sources:

Pulsating gels could power tiny robots
Miniature jet engines could power cellphones
Bacteria could power tiny robots
Solitons Could Power Molecular Electronics
Plankton could power robotic submarines
Bananas could power Aussie homes
Body heat could power pacemaker
Giant propulsion kites could power shipping
Pocket-sized windmills could power wireless networks
Spinach could power future’s technology
Bio fuel cells could power portable gadgets
Wave powered ducks could power desalination
Moon gas could power your home

Assuming for a second that none of these actually turn out to be viable, then I think we'll have to rely on one more, for the long journey to the nearest habitable planet:

Magnetic beams could power swifter spacecraft

Some noob insisted in the comments that I change to the old set-up, so that links automatically open in a new window. After all of 10 seconds hacking, I have implemented just such a system. However if you prefer links to open in the same window you can now uncheck a check box right down at the bottom of the page. How's that for reader responsiveness?

My brother, Mr X, spotted Heston Blumenthal dining at Bar Shu last night. His new series Perfection is must-see weekly viewing for me. There's an accompanying cookbook, video clips at the BBC, and recipes at The Times. This week's Black Forest Gateau was challenging, requiring a paint gun, an iSi whip, and a Spacebag. I did however complete last week's perfect bangers 'n' mash (pictured), complete with low-temperature poached sausages, and a heat stable agar butter gel, studding the mash.

BBC footage of Titan, Britain's newly discovered biggest cave.

Chicago State University have installed a robot librarian, that uses random shelf stacking for optimal speed, exactly like the St Thomas' Hospital pharmacy robot.(via Robowis2)

Last Saturday was Blackout London a 3 hour protest/intervention against Climate Change. There's something pathologically naive about holding the event on the Saturday before Guy Fawkes, the one day of the year when particulate matter in the air guarantees a totally bright sky all night long. (via Things)

Stunning long exposure shot of fairground rides by night.

Say hello to the Untiffany Dunk, due for release in December. They just booked a place at the top of my christmas list. The colorway is hotter than either the original Tiffany Dunk SB, or SBTG's minimalist reworking.

Do the East and West coast of the US feel the same way as the Brits do about Bush?

Letters home from a gap year abroad:

Now the third [bungee jump in New Zealand] was a piece of cake. The rope is attached to your waist and you can run and jump off, and at 43 metres it was all over very quickly. However, I got to dangle for a while as I hadn't listened to the guy explaining the harness he uses to pull people up with, so I put it on wrong.

worstplacestotakeadump dotcom, a photoblog.

The Indie report on the former celebrity weightlifter, who just became the UK Scrabble champ.

Whizzball is incredibly awesomely great fun. You make little Rube Goldberg machines, sending a virtual ball hopping and rolling around the board. Then you submit them for other users to solve and rate. My best effort is The Ball Breaker. Bonne chance budding Goldbergs.

When I had comments on, nobody much used them, except to insult me. I'm particularly fond of the guy who suggested I just "...write down my boring thoughts using Word, and save them on my own computer, so no-one else can read them." Anyway, there has been a actual clamour in my inbox for comments to come back; presumably so you can resume insulting me. I've abandoned enetation which appeared to be dying, in favour of haloscan. Comment your hearts out.

BGBlitz2Go launched about an hour ago. I've been playing it solidly ever since on my Nokia N80. The future really is here, when the world's strongest backgammon program can run on your mobile phone. It's a free download, so grab it now.

The Vice article on Cambridge drinking clubs was a blast from the past for me. On the morning of my first dissection, in my first week as a medical student at Cambridge, I woke up in the flower beds around Trinity Fountain, after a particularly harsh medics' initiation.

Hot on the heels of the news that Britain's rat population is larger than its human population (in number, not biomass), The Guardian give us a handy classification of littering, with the worst varieties of litter being: "Construction waste, flaming scooter, horse carcass."

Kottke reports on snowclones, as a modern form of cliche, somehow omitting my x is a gateway drug for y snowclone, which was in fact my first ever kottkedotting two years ago. Did you ever notice though that if you add GMail to del.icio.us it now automagically claims to be the Best. Email. Ever.

The movie String, for which I was the original camerman and 2nd AD, premieres on Sunday. I'm sure it's sold out, but I'm proud of my only cinematic meisterwerk.