Category: General

Windows Live Writer

Morgan Avery

Just trying out this software – though it’s not new with Windows 7, I’m pretty sure I used it once a year or so ago. Perhaps after Microsoft New Zealand Evangelist Nigel Parker demonstrated it?

It’s pretty clever, just give it your blog address, username, and password and it goes from there. Detecting the type of blog system you use, working out how to upload media files, and even goes so far as to scrape your homepage with and without a quick test post* it generates, in order to be able to render out a preview of your page with your blog theme faked up locally.

* Looked like this:

temporarypost

It’s a very tidy system. (Entirely unnecessary of course, I’ve never had any trouble using WordPress’s built-in editor, and that has the advantage of being the same everywhere I go.)

Water powered scooter?

Morgan Avery

Hoverboards don't work on water. Neither do scooters.

Scooters don’t like it if you try to run them on this kind of cocktail.

She’s been parked outside exposed to the weather, for the whole time I’ve been in this place. I don’t know if there’s going to be a good place for her to live at the new apartment, so I arranged to stash her at my mum’s place. Which required getting her going.

This is what was in the tank, nearly a third water. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out this had something to do with why it wouldn’t start. Drained out the tank, ran some meths through the lines (it’s hydroscopic, so it grabs any left over water, and it’ll run through the engine ok so you don’t have to worry about how to rinse it out of the fuel system in turn, about the ideal stuff for the job, really), whipped off the airbox, cracked open and cleaned out the carbie, and with just a few (dozen) ginger kicks she came back to (initially hesitant) life.

It was great fun riding her over to Ponsonby, to begin with only slowly creeping up to a wheezing 30km/h, but by the time I got to my mum’s place, it was back up to the usual massively powerful and terrifying 60km/h.

I was grinning all the way.

If you want a reliable engine, you really have to go Japanese.

My Problems Are Like So Important

Morgan Avery

embarassment

Don’t ask me why it was there, but I found this photo on an old memory card on my desk. I wish I hadn’t, ‘cos now I’m reminded just how fucking ridiculous my video card looks. That’s a princess wearing golden armor, right? I’m just glad I don’t usually have to see the hideous thing. It’ll be tough going forgetting the garish thing is in there.

If I made video cards they’d be available in either of two colours, yellow with a white racing stripe, or black with a red racing stripe. Any model name or number would be black on black or yellow on yellow. No sad faced pouty princesses with red painted lips and stupid bloody armor, that’s for sure.

I could probably be convinced into releasing a yearly special edition. Just 20 cards, and only available on my birthday. All completely covered – back, front, and sides – with hundreds and thousands of tiny little pictures of tits.

Spicy Dal

Morgan Avery3 Comments

Ingredients

  • 1 & 1/4 cups red lentils. (Brown lentils are a fine substitute, or yellow split peas if you must, but green lentils won’t soften properly.)
  • 3 & 1/3 cups water.
  • 1 & 1/2 tsp salt.
  • 3 tbs butter.
  • 1 tsp ground cumin.
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric.
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne.
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger.
  • 1/4 tsp ground coriander.
  • 1/2 tsp mustard seeds.
  • 6 whole cloves.

Method

1_rinselentils

Rinse the lentils well in cold water. Drain and repeat once or twice. The first time through you’ll note that the water gets quite milky, you want to wash them until the water is fairly clear.

2_saltedwater

Add to pot with 3 & 1/3rd cups water and the salt.

3_boil

Boil until very soft, the water will be mostly or entirely absorbed.

4_butter

Once the lentils are bubbling away and well on their way to cooking down, melt the butter in a separate pan.

5_spices

Add the spices. Your house will start to smell reallllllly good. (Don’t be mad, I’m not saying it doesn’t now, just that it’ll get even better.)

6_addlentilstospices

Once the lentils are all cooked down (note how much the colour of the red lentils has changed), carefully add them to the spices & butter.

7_mix

Mix the butter & spices well with the lentils.

8_simmeruntilthick

Cook until very thick, stirring frequently.

Serve with rice (I suggest basmati) and a big dollop of yoghurt. This dal can be a bit hot for some people, the yoghurt goes a long way to defusing that – and it’s really delicious, so why wouldn’t you?

I find it a very warming, comforting dish. Particularly great on cold winter nights.

Most Delicious Cornbread

Morgan Avery3 Comments

Ingredients

  • 1 cup cornflour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup oil (I use olive oil)
  • 1 & 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbs baking powder
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 2 cups grated cheese
  • 1 cup (or so) capsicum, sliced (I use roasted red peppers)
  • chillies (optional, to taste)
  • 1 can of corn kernels, drained

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C.

3_sourcream

Add eggs, oil, & sour cream to mixing bowl.

4_blend

Blend until smooth.

7_salt

Add corn flour, baking powder, & salt.

8_capsicumandchillies

Add sliced capsicum (and optional chillies).

9_cheese

Add most of the grated cheese (save a little).

10_corn

Add drained corn kernels.

11_bigmix

Mix up well.

12_dish

Add to cake tin or baking dish.

13_sprinklecheese

Sprinkle on remaining cheese.

14_goldenbrown

Bake at 180°C until the top is golden brown and a skewer or sharp knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. In this dish it’s about 45 minutes, in a wider diameter & thin walled baking tin it’d be more like 30.

The corn bread will be very moist and flavourful.

Making another short…

Morgan Avery

For use as part of the 48hours Auckland finals. We shot 5 locations in about 4 hours – though depending on how you count, this could actually be as many as 9. We went totally guerilla with very quick setup, and much more of a shoot & scoot approach than we usually do with our regular 48hours production team (which suits me, I like to figure stuff out in advance, and shoot quickly – we didn’t do the sorting out, so we weren’t that quick, but still far quicker than the team’s normal approach).

Including shooting, with permission, in a city convenience store – for which I had to pay the steep price of $4. (It was either drop $4 for a can of V or the guy was going to kick us out, man really was not delighted when we turned up with a camera.)

Andrew Conlan wearing a snorricam rig on set.

Andrew wearing a snorricam rig on set – have only checked footage on the camera LCD, but it looks great so far.

Apee on location.

So what’s the short about? Well, here’s a hint in the form of our Apee (our award for winning 48hours Auckland in 2008) at one of our locations.

Oh, and just by the way, I die horribly at the end of a sword.

It’s really stupid, and hopefully going to be a lot of fun for those few who are lucky enough to see it.