Monthly Archives: April 2008

Tweets on 2008-04-16

  • Ooh, they’ve started to instal the "Life Stones" in Trinity Square #
  • Eep! Flashdrive mysteriously doesn’t contain presentation file! Fingers crossed for email backup! #
  • Ooh, they’ve got the floral tea set out today. #
  • Just heard they’ve caught the men who burgled the Council House last week. Didn’t expect that! #
  • Whim cinema: whinema #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Science in Nottingham

I track “Nottingham” on Twitter – which mostly just gives me fairly inconsequential tweets from people across the country who come here and prop up our economy in business or pleasure.

But a couple of weeks ago, I started getting messages about “Youtube videos of Nottingham scientists”

Turns out there’s a year-long film project of a group of people working in science in this city, and you can watch the project as it happens with little snippets of film on the website test-tube.org.uk

I have to admit, so far I’ve mostly been looking at the videos of the new University of Nottingham hot air balloon, but I also spent an interesting 8 minutes following Aziz around a new lab he’s just about to inhabit. The fascinating thing was the lab had been in his building, vacant, for a year or two, while his team were cramped into an already overcrowded lab on another floor. In showing the cameraman around his new space, he said something along the lines of the previous team had left so suddenly they simply left experiments in the middle. The room is full of bottles of liquids, and you have to wonder whether it’s entirely safe…

Good stuff – will be interesting to see it develop.

Tweets on 2008-04-15

  • @chriskeating twitter application or twittersync #
  • Pausing briefly for a felafal sandwich before the afternoon committee. #
  • Oops. Wrong room. Cllrs in one room. Staff, guests, technology all in another. Cllrs decamp upstairs. #
  • Apparently, "Dire Straits" and "Duran Duran" are different #
  • And it’s "Girls on film", not "girls on fire" #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Tweets on 2008-04-14

  • Fascinated to hear Martha Kearney keeps bees. #
  • Good grief, it’s snowing again. #
  • Looking at the damage the burglars did to my office over the weekend. The antique panelling is spilt and damaged. #
  • @dr_nick don’t think they got anything from our office but some laptops gone from down the hall #
  • Booking a place on a cllr day trip to see what happens to the contents of our recycling bins. #
  • Grinning like a loon all through Jonathan Calder’s Statesman article http://www.newstatesman.com/200804140006. Now to public ward meeting #
  • @miketd i passed on you free Nottingham Elbow ticket offer to my other half who likes that sort of thing, but no response. #
  • I think @artesea should pick a harder numberplate. #
  • Remembering why I usually go to supermarket on my own. #
  • *still* shopping. Bah. #
  • Cats concerned the MGM lion is coming to get them. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Manda’s minty, lentilly, bulghary soup

Manda, (who has now returned to France) suggested in a veggie place on the internet a recipe for a type of Turkish soup based on lentils and bulghar wheat. Her initial inspiration was this site; I have put her version of it here on nibblous. It involved quite a lot of mint, which I didn’t have in stock, so first I had to find the mint; but eventually I had all the ingredients and made a version yesterday.

It didn’t taste of much to me. I think I have jaded tastebuds, and some vegan recipes which rely on the simplicity of veggie ingredients just don’t do much to me. P quite liked it. I think adding more stock and/or salt will probably make it more toothsome. It’s certainly nice and healthy and very filling.

But I think my favourite thing to do with bulghar wheat remains this pilaff recipe – also vegan, so long as you choose your stock carefully.

Twitter plugin

I’m not sure I entirely like the way this twitter plugin that posts the day’s tweets has the unexpected consequence of highlighting how many days it’s been since I last wrote a real post.

On the plus side, it does mean I’ll easily be able to blog when I go away on holiday, something I’m planning to do, erm, four times in the next three months.

After a little indecision, we’ve plumped for a week in Cyprus visiting friends who work as holiday reps out there; ten days with the tent in Glasgow, Glencoe, Hadrian’s Wall and Scarborough, hopefully fitting in six friends en route. Somehow, the Eurovision Song Contest will have to be factored in as well. Then I will have a week in Munich in July before we both go singing in Salisbury in August.

I did have an informal personal policy about not flying more than once a year. I have easily kept this over the last few years, mostly because the opportunity to use a plane more than once simply hasn’t arisen. I’ll be breaking it this year: both Cyprus and Munich are a pretty long way away, so that’s two lots of flights. Three if you count the fact that I couldn’t find a sensible direct route to Munich so will be making stopovers in Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. Not looking forward to that journey much – it will take a long time, mean lots of hanging around in airports, and on the outward journey, means setting off at the crack of dawn as well.